Be The Vote That Got Away by Gary Hainsworth

It is not throwing away your vote to vote for a third party candidate. Here is the reason why. If you don't vote Democrats and Republicans just assume it was a vote they would never have had, and don't despair that they could have gotten your vote if only they somehow courted you and your constituents better. If you had not been the vote that got away.

However, if you vote for a third party candidate and enough people do the same, and the numbers become large enough, they will realize that this is a potential voting bloc they could have utilized. In future elections, aware of this significant chunk of the electorate, they might decide to adjust their policies in the next election, especially if one of the sides would have won if not for the x-amount of votes they could have had...if only. This happened in 1912 when millions of people voted for the Bull Moose Party instead of the Republican Party causing enough votes to be split that a Democrat named Woodrow Wilson was able to take the presidency from William Howard Taft.

During the 1920s, the Democrats were losing election after election: Harding, Coolidge and Hoover defeating Cox, Davis, and Al Smith. Although there was not much of a chance for John W. Davis to defeat Calvin Coolidge, he did lose 4,831,706 votes due to a third party candidate: Robert M. La Follette Sr. of the Progressive Party. Votes he probably could have had. This was not an unusual pattern in American politics at the time. Bill Clinton, who never won more than half of the vote, was able to win in 1992 and 1996 because of Ross Perot.

In 2000, almost three million votes that probably would have gone to Al Gore went  to the Green Party, siphoning away votes that would have gone to the Democratic Party. Considering that Al Gore lost by half a million votes, having those three million would have made all the difference. Voter irregularities in Florida would have largely been irrelevant. Since 2000, the Democrats having adopted the social justice mantra in spades.

Voting for a third party is not throwing away your vote because if enough people vote the opposing parties will have to take notice. In time, they will eventually attempt to absorb that third party platform aware that not doing so might cost them the next election.This might be one of the proven ways to get the changes that you want. However, if you don't go out and vote for conscience, they'll just assume that the reason you didn't vote was because you were in the middle of binge-watching Parks & Recreation and couldn't be bothered to vote.

Prove them wrong.