THE APPLECART
By Jeffrey D. Treest
IV Leader Columnist, Feb. 4, 2010
People aren’t voting for the candidates that they are supposed to. Don’t they realize that this has all been decided already?
Every time I hear the foregone conclusions about who a particular place will vote for recently, it goes the other way. It seems as though, when you tell people who they are going to vote for, they don’t. “It’s the independents,” they say.
In fact, 51 percent of the Massachusetts voters claimed to be independent. But, they did not vote for an independent candidate in the 2010 Senate special election.
Independent must mean sometimes Democrat and sometimes Republican. I don’t think there is anything independent about playing along with the bipartisan system.
I say, let’s be independent. There are many third-party candidates to choose from. And if the goal is to change things, then giving votes and campaign contributions to lesser known political parties is an effective way to do it.
In every major election there are a host of candidates that aren’t even mentioned by the general media. But, when you go to the polling place, there they are on the ballot.
The trouble is that this might be the first time that we see their names and have no idea who they are or what their platform is. By this time we have picked the lesser of the two evils that were presented to us.
In the upcoming Illinois “mid-term” elections, there will be Green Party candidates on the ballot. According to www.gp.org, the Greens stand for “participatory democracy, social justice, and ecological and economic sustainability.” This is what the pundits call “far left.” If the Democrats aren’t progressive enough for you, then these guys are worth a look.
At the opposite end of the political universe is the Libertarian Party. At www.lp.org, one can find “Libertarians believe in the American heritage of liberty, enterprise, and personal responsibility.” These folks are generally considered to be uber-conservative. The Libertarian Party also has candidates for every major position in Illinois for 2010. In Massachusetts, Libertarian Joe Kennedy was making Republicans fearful of splitting the Republican vote.
The accepted notion is that third-parties and independent candidates only serve to steal votes from their ideologically, nearest political opponents.
Some might remember all the trouble Ross Perot caused during Clinton vs. H. W. Bush presidential election. Perot couldn’t decide if he was going to run or not, but managed to throw some much needed chaos into presidential debates.
It doesn’t have to be a bipartisan system. There are a great many other options for voters to choose from in local and national elections.
The last two years have seen a surge in political enthusiasm, immediately followed by an abrupt disenchantment with the system.
We are dissatisfied with what is getting done in D.C. and Illinois, and there is an effective and peaceful means to make things happen.
Find the candidates that truly stand for our individual concerns, and vote for them.