Image Transcription:
A tweet from the George Takei Twitter account which states:
"A Democrat was in the White House when my family was sent to the internment camps in 1941. It was an egregious violation of our human and civil rights.
It would have been understandable if people like me said they’d never vote for a Democrat again, given what had been done to us.
But being a liberal, being a progressive, means being able to look past my own grievances and concerns and think of the greater good. It means working from within the Democratic party to make it better, even when it has betrayed its values.
I went on to campaign for Adlai Stevenson when I became an adult. I marched for civil rights and had the honor of meeting Dr. Martin Luther King. I fought for redress for my community and have spent my life ensuring that America understood that we could not betray our Constitution in such a way ever again.
Bill Clinton broke my heart when he signed DOMA into law. It was a slap in the face to the LGBTQ community. And I knew that we still had much work to do. But I voted for him again in 1996 despite my misgivings, because the alternative was far worse. And my obligation as a citizen was to help choose the best leader for it, not to check out by not voting out of anger or protest.
There is no leader who will make the decision you want her or him to make 100 percent of the time. Your vote is a tool of hope for a better world. Use it wisely, for it is precious. Use it for others, for they are in need of your support, too."
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The last paragraph I find particularly powerful and something more people really should take into account.
That's because unless they get rid of the first-past-the-post system, it's 100% wasted.
Unfortunately, FPTP also keeps the existing dominant parties complacent in only having one enemy, so they don't actually have to try very hard. So changing it is unlikely to gather a lot of steam, either. "Lesser evil" sucks, but is ironically a lesser evil than just throwing away the vote entirely.
I disagree with this mindset.
In a purely hypothetical scenario say 10% of people vote for the third party candidate, and this candidate has policies which neither of the two main parties have, say more green policies. When the results come in and one of the main parties lose by 5%, they're going to start thinking about adopting a few more green policies to capture some of that third party vote for the next election.
Voting third party can absolutely change the policies of the main parties, it happened in the UK with UKIP - a party which had less than 10% of the vote and no chance of a majority, but it spooked the big parties enough that they promised a referendum on EU membership.
Sadly this doesn't work if one of the parties is threatening to do all they can to break down the democracy before you get your chance to see the results at the next vote.