DANGER! Don’t be fooled by third-party or independent candidates!

Don’t be fooled by third parties and independent candidates. You will waste your vote, but even worse, you are effectively voting Republican. They cannot win. They are funded by Big Money Republicans to siphon votes away from Democrats, so that right-wing Republicans can win. In fact, third parties are Republican tools. If you vote for a third party or independent candidate, you are 100% voting Republican. Sure, it’s reasonable that if you aren’t satisfied with the two major candidates, you might vote for a third party/independent. Sure, you know they won’t win, and at least you are registering your disgust of the two major parties. Third party/independent candidates have delivered horrible, terrible, awful, and devastating results. In 2016, Jill Stein, Green Party candidate Jill Stein got 1.07% of the vote in Michigan. Libertarian Gary Johnson got 3.59%. Trump beat Clinton by 0.23% and got Michigan’s 16 electoral votes. Here is a 2015 photo of Jill Stein and General Michael Flynn in Moscow at a dinner with Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia who was definitely not meddling in U.S. politics, not at all. Jill Stein is running again in 2024 to steal Democratic votes. In 2016, thanks to third-party candidates, despite losing the popular vote by almost 2.9 million votes (48.2% Clinton, 46.1% Trump), Trump got 77 more electoral votes than Clinton. And we know what happened. In 2000, Ralph Nader ran on the Green Party ticket. Google him; he was a hero and a decent guy who proves the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In Florida, Nader got 97,488 votes, 1.63%. George W. Bush beat Vice President Al Gore by 537 votes out of 5,963,110 cast in Florida, gaining 25 electoral votes. Despite losing the national popular vote 47.9% to 48.4%, Bush won the election by 5 electoral votes. Bush launched over 20 years of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was re- elected in 2004. He got 50.7% of the popular vote, and won by 35 electoral votes. Now for 2024, some Democrats and independent/No-Party-Affiliation votes especially will consider third party/independent candidates. Jill Stein is back. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is running as an independent. A few candidates are duking it out for the Libertarian slot. The big news is No Labels, a party funded by right-wing conservative Big Money. With a “Democrat” for President and Republican for Vice President, No Labels pretends to represent the “center” and may appeal to some Democrats who feel that Biden is too old. With so many candidates to grab votes away from Democrats, Trump (or whoever might be a surprise Republican candidate) could win with a substantial minority of the popular vote. Even worse, if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes, the final decision is made in the House of Representatives with only one vote per state delegation. This would guarantee a Republican win because there are more Red states (with millions of less people) than Blue today. VOTE DEM for Democracy! Which side of the barbed wire will you and your friends be on if Trump/Republicans win? Take-aways: 1. Third party/independent candidates with small fractions of the vote can flip electoral votes to Republicans. 2. A vote for third party/independents is a vote for Republicans. 3. We must not vote for Republicans either directly, or indirectly. 4. We must not be fooled into throwing away our votes on candidates with no chance of winning.