Can’t bring yourself to vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump? Me either, that’s why I’m glad there is another option for casting my vote, the Libertarian Party and it’s nominee, Gary Johnson. If you’re like me then you’ve been following this presidential election with your head in your hands in total disgust. The options in front of me lead me to want to bury my head in the sand until 2020 and pretend I don’t have to take part in this, but I do. To not vote would be just as disastrous as voting for either of the front runners from the Democratic and Republican parties.
I’ll say this up front, I am a Bernie Sanders supporter all the way. I am 100% in his corner and until I found out about Gary Johnson I was lost. I didn’t know what I would do when I got to the voting booth in November. I was faced with the task of valuing my country over my morals and that hurt. I know to not cast a vote would be to say I don’t care, but I do. Not only do I care, I recognize how many people have been harmed and even killed during the fight for my right to vote. To not vote would be a slap in the face off my ancestors. Vote for who was the dilemma.
Not anymore, now I know that Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party exists. If Bernie Sanders doesn’t secure the Democratic Party nomination then there is still someone I can put my vote behind. Are you familiar with Gary Johnson? If not, let me be the one to introduce him to you.
At 63 Gary Johnson is no stranger to the political scene, whether you have heard his name before or not, Johnson has been actively participating in politics since the early 1990’s. A former Republican, Johnson joined the Libertarian Party in 2012 and was nominated as their candidate in 2012 as well. Before running for president, Johnson was a two term governor in New Mexico from 1995- 2003. Johnson found major success in areas outside of politics as well with his construction company. While in college at the University of New Mexico he was a door to door handy man before starting Big J Enterprises in 1974. He grew it from a one man operation to a a multi-million dollar business with over 1,000 employee strong business before he sold it in 1999.
As a Libertarian, Johnson is economically conservative yet very liberal when it comes to social issues.
“I am fiscally conservative in spades and I am socially liberal in spades,” Gary Johnson told reporters after securing the Libertarian Party nomination. “I would cut back on military interventions that have the unintended consequence of making us less safe in the world,” he added.
Johnson would like to create a reduction in spending and taxes and would like to eliminate the federal income tax and corporate tax and replace them with a national sales tax. The Libertarian Party nominee would also like to get rid of the IRS and various other government programs. Libertarians generally believe that people should be allowed to do anything that doesn’t affect the welfare of others and support abortion rights, same-sex marriage and decriminalization of illegal substances.
Former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld has been chosen as the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential candidate.
What will be important now is to get a good media campaign going to bring more attention to himself and the Libertarian Party. It must be noted that no third party candidate has ever won the candidacy but they do give voters an opportunity to vote with for someone other than the status quo. Donald Trump scares the hell out of me and Hillary Clinton makes me sick, I cringe at the thought of either of them as my president. From the way the election is going I may have to deal with that reality though. If I do I will be voting for Gary Johnson, not because I think he can change the minds of millions of Americans who have been used to voting within the two party system for centuries but because it’s the only vote I can cast morally.
There are things in life we feel strongly about and those are the things we must stand up for. Voting for Gary Johnson will be me taking a stand against tyranny, which is what I see as the outcome of either Hillary or Trump being the other nominees on the ballot. This will be my second time in recent elections to cross party lines to vote. Last year I was forced to vote for Maryland’s new republican governor when the democratic option was just unbearable.
I’ve been a staunch democrat my life life, not by choice but by programming. Growing up in a Black household or church it is almost drilled in us, republicans are evil and the democrats are on our side. As I got older I began to see the reality, the two party system in today’s society is a farce, they work together anyway. There are plenty of republicans who would gladly endure a Hillary Clinton OR Donald Trump presidency. Sadly, there are even more democrats would are blindly behind Hillary Clinton without even caring about her, just that she seems the choice of the leaders of the democratic party.
This is my last year as a democrat, I will be registering and an independent when the election is over. I will also join the effort to let independent voters participate in the primaries in all states. Bernie Sanders has run a great campaign and went from widely unknown to neck and neck with Clinton in the polls. He has rallies of massive numbers and a generation of new voters behind him. The media and the Democratic National Convention committee members have done a good job at hiding that fact and hindering him as much as they can without any blatant offenses. They’ve done enough however, to make a young educated voter like myself, uninterested in being a part of a party that does not want what the voters want. The voters want Bernie Sanders.
It’s a good chance I won’t get to vote for Bernie in November but when my grand kids ask me when faced with a choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton who did I choose I will be able to hold my head held high and tell them neither. Gary Johnson has a more realistic vision of how I view the world than Trump or Clinton. I am proud to say that even though I may not have backed the winner I backed the person I thought was best for the job out of the choices given.
