Why I voted third party and I’m not sorry at all

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Tribune News Service

I’m a progressive Californian, a Black man, and I did not vote for Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris this year or Donald Trump. I voted for Claudia De La Cruz, the Peace and Freedom Party candidate for president. The decision was easy. With two exceptions over the last four decades of presidential elections, I have always voted for a progressive third-party presidential candidate. (The two exceptions? Hillary Clinton in 2016 because I liked the idea of breaking the glass ceiling. And Walter Mondale in 1984 because of my distaste for Ronald Reagan.) I reject the guilt-trip knock about how a third-party vote is a throwaway vote, or worse, one that opens the door for big, bad bogeyman candidates. And I don’t make my choices thinking it doesn’t matter because in my blue state a Democrat will win anyway. I mark my ballot the way I do because it reflects my conscience and deepest political beliefs.

I’ll admit that this year I didn’t tell most of my friends and family my plan. I would have been ripped from pillar to post, verbally mugged: “It’s a wasted vote.” “It will hurt the cause.” “It is downright silly to vote for someone who almost no one has heard of in a party that hasn’t been relevant since the Vietnam War.” My relatives and associates were passionate supporters of Harris. Their enthusiasm was understandable. They would have regarded my vote as wrecking the history-making chances for a Black woman with East Indian roots to sit in the Oval Office. I understood, and I had no illusion that I could change their minds.

In any case, the issue for me was not Harris, her policy positions or her campaign. (I won’t engage in the onslaught of second, third and fourth guessing about what sunk her.) The issue was and is the two-party system itself. Republican and Democratic politics are an iron chain that tethers the American electorate. Voting for De La Cruz was my way of taking a hammer to that chain. I prize independence, the right to exercise freedom of choice, and I believe that more choices are true to the spirit of democracy.

This is not a starry-eyed delusion. Many countries have a pluralistic representative system with multiple political parties. Their citizens have a real choice to vote their beliefs and interests. The parties they can vote for are not on the fringe. They win offices. They hold seats in parliaments and assemblies. They often form coalitions with other parties to gain a more powerful seat at the table. The multiplicity of parties gives more people a distinct voice in how their government works.

But baked into US politics is the notion that there can only be two parties, and the winner takes all. The Constitution doesn’t demand it, and every four years, I hear people wishing for other choices, other parties that could have a shot at making an impact. With either a Republican or a Democrat guaranteed to take power, special interests make their bets. This year, both campaigns had king’s-ransom war chests flowing with donations from regular people but mainly from fat-cat corporations, industry and trade groups, big-gun labor unions and a parade of millionaires and billionaires.

The two-party system also guaranteed that only Republican and Democratic agendas got media exposure, major endorsements and nonstop public attention. Other approaches to our challenges, our security or our role in the world just didn’t have a chance. Let me be clear again. My vote for De La Cruz was not a deliberate snub of Harris, and I have no regrets. I simply believe that for our democracy to be a democracy, the people must have choices, and those choices should not exclusively come marked with a Republican or Democrat label.