With the elections barely a month away, many people this year have began to look at third party candidates. Who can blame them? I’m sure if we had taken a survey on campus there would have been a very strong favor towards Bernie Sanders. So, when Senator Sanders didn’t get the nomination, many felt cheated. Many felt they couldn’t support either Trump or Hillary
This is where Jill Stein and Gary Johnson come into play.
Say you’re a Conservative who’s not radical and into Trump. You might see Johnson as the man who should be up there debating, not Trump.
Or, say you’re a Liberal, and you don’t feel that you can trust Clinton? Jill Stein probably sounds much more appealing to you.
There a something to be said about third party candidates that gain as much momentum as these two have. They bring a lot of strong ideas to the table that help us understand perpectives that we don’t get with our party system.
I want to bring up, however, the privilege many of us in Illinois don’t realize we have when it comes to voting third party. Illinois is primarily a blue state, meaning that there is an extremely high chance that when all votes are cast, Illinois electoral votes will go to Hilary Clinton. This means a lot of people who are voting third party know that there is a small chance for their candidate to win. There is really no risk to them voting third party, knowing that in the end Illinois will go to Clinton. This is their way of speaking out saying they don’t like either candidate.
I want to say before anything else, I support the right for you to use your vote this way. It’s a great thing, saying that you don’t support these candidates that are on the Democratic and Republican ballet, while still remaining a part of the voting process.
However, I want you to take a moment and think if you didn’t live in Illinois and lived in a swing state instead. I mean really think about it. There is a chance that you may move to a swing state one day, and you may have to come to the idea  of “settling.”
Nobody ever likes settling. We all want to get our way all the time, and that’s just part of human nature. However, there are a lot of times in your life you won’t get your way and have to choose between two hard choices.
You have to understand that your vote could be a deciding factor on our president one day, and if you want to vote third party, think hard about it. There’s nothing wrong with it, but remember; if you lived somewhere else, you could be the deciding vote between President Trump or President Clinton.