Today, I wasted my vote.
While most Americans traversed their polling stations with a clear intent to vote for either President Barack Obama or his Republican challenger Mitt Romney, I had a different plan in mind.
I voted third party. I voted for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson.
The former governor of New Mexico isn’t the most popular or widely known candidate — he’s polled at only 6 percent across the nation. However, Johnson’s platform offers the kind of stark change we were promised four years ago, and it’s a change we need to embrace.
In the past 12 years, I’ve witnessed this nation move in a disturbing direction. Civil liberties have been rolled back at an alarming pace; we’ve involved ourselves in numerous foreign conflicts, all while sacrificing our ideals and morality; and the beginning of a sophisticated surveillance state has emerged to keep watch over us.
I never had a say in any of these policies until now.
Johnson has the strongest record among every candidate on the ballot when it comes to civil liberties. In January, the American Civil Liberties Union gave Johnson the best score on its “Candidate Report Card on Civil Liberties.”
The Libertarian Party candidate has voiced opposition to the Patriot Act, the 2001 law that allowed law enforcement to conduct warrantless searches, and the FISA Amendments Act, which expanded the National Security Agency’s ability to monitor Americans’ communications and gave telecommunications companies complicit in this act immunity from lawsuits.
Johnson is also the only major candidate who has stated he would never have signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA). The NDAA allowed the federal government to indefinitely detain anyone, including American citizens, without a trial.
Similarly, Johnson is bringing a sane and reasonable foreign policy to the table this election.
Johnson wants to bring the troops home from Afghanistan as soon as possible and to end American military intervention around the globe. He is also the only major candidate who is against the use of drones –– he claims they create more terrorists than they kill and that they harm too many innocent civilians.
Liberals can find comfort knowing that Johnson, like most libertarians, rejects the social conservatism that has come to dominate the Republican Party.
The libertarian has openly said gay marriage is a constitutionally protected right, he is pro-choice — although he wants to ban late-term abortions — and he is willing to end the War on Drugs, which has succeeded only in making our prison population the largest in the world and ruining the lives of many nonviolent individuals.
This isn’t to say I agree with all of Johnson’s policies.
His desire to cut all government programs by 43 percent and replace the income and estate taxes with the Fair Tax, a single national consumption tax, seems a bit regressive for my tastes.
However, my vote for Johnson is something of a strategic and symbolic gesture.
The Libertarian Party is the best hope for fiscal conservatism in America. Forgoing the social conservatism that, mark my words, will be defeated by history, the Libertarian Party is the conservative foil needed to keep Democrats on their toes, especially in regard to civil liberties.
Unfortunately, as a third party, it has had to overcome obstacles just to get on the ballot. Johnson is only on the ballot in 48 of the 50 states, and he had to battle in the courtrooms just to get there.
Yet, if Johnson receives just 5 percent of the popular vote today, then the Libertarian Party will receive equal funding and ballot access in all states in 2016.
This could help the Libertarian Party and, perhaps, other third parties like the Green Party emerge as contenders in national politics. Americans could even become enlightened as to how two party control limits their choices.
Either way, I owe it to many to vote for Johnson.
I owe it to Americans who fear their government’s encroachment on civil liberties, I owe it to those who’ve been beaten by the harsh drug laws in this country and I owe it to the innocent victims of drone strikes in the Middle East.
I wouldn’t waste my vote on anyone else.
