Noah Baron, Assistant Editor
Ideology: Religious Progressive | Writing From: Columbia University

I am a registered Democrat, and I have been a long time supporter of the Democratic Party. In 2002, I volunteered to help re-elect my Congressman, Rush Holt (D); in January 2008, I volunteered for the John Edwards campaign in New Hampshire; for nearly six months in 2008 and 2009, I worked for the New York State Democratic Party; and in the 2008 elections, I voted a straight Democratic Party ticket, with one exception – I voted for Nader for President.

For a long time, I had been planning on voting for Obama, but as I learned more about the candidates, I became decreasingly enthusiastic about the Democratic nominee.

Like most liberals, I believed that the prospect of Obama as president was better than that of another four years under the Republicans, with Sarah Palin only a heartbeat away from the presidency, However, I don’t believe that any candidate “owns” my vote, and the fact that Obama was the lesser of two evils was not reason enough to vote for him.

I believe that my vote belongs to me, and that I am entitled to vote for the candidate who best represents my beliefs. The fact that I happen to be to the left of most of the candidates of the Democratic Party on many issues does not mean that they will automatically be getting my vote. Third party candidates have often been accused of stealing the votes from a primary candidate, but I find this notion patently ridiculous. In my case, I simply found better representation in the third party candidate.

As the New York City mayoral election approaches, more and more attention is being focused on the Green Party candidate the Reverend Billy Talen, for whom I have been working since the end of the last academic year. Although he has little chance of winning against Bloomberg’s millions, he represents my interests more than any other candidate. As I wrote in a Letter to the Editor in the Columbia Daily Spectator, I am deeply unhappy with both Mayor Bloomberg and the Democratic candidate, Bill Thompson:

Let’s take a look at what we’ve had for the past seven years. Bloomberg vetoed and then challenged in court a law which would require all corporations doing business with New York to provide equal benefits to same-sex couples; he has focused his economic policy almost entirely on Wall Street; when it came time to deal with the budget shortfall of the MTA, Bloomberg approved major service cuts and a fare hike which disproportionately affects those who can least afford it.

Thompson probably wouldn’t be much different: his platform boasts of his campaign to end “taxes, fines, and fees that unfairly hamper the growth of businesses.” What about helping out the people who need help the most, instead of focusing on bubble economies which burst, leaving the city in debt? If Thompson wins—though he almost certainly won’t—we’ll probably wind up with yet another mayor whose solution to homelessness is to ship them off to someplace else.

Admittedly, the race isn’t very close — polling puts Thompson about twenty points behind Bloomberg — but if it were, I have no doubt the Thompson campaign would be screaming bloody murder about the fact that the Green Party had dared to run a candidate – and in an election year! As I’ve heard time and time again from Democratic activists, if you vote for the Green Party candidate, you’re just “stealing votes” from the Democrat.

I’m sorry—I wasn’t aware that my vote belonged to anyone but me. If I don’t vote for the Democrat, that means that I don’t think he would do a good job in whatever position he would assume if elected, and that I don’t think he would accurately reflect my values in his execution of the duties of that position. And if I don’t believe either of those things, why should I vote for him? Indeed, wouldn’t it be a civic disservice to vote for someone whom I think would do a poor job in office? And isn’t the point of voting to ensure that the people in office accurately reflect the values of their constituents? If that is the case, then I think it would be simply dishonest of me to vote for someone whom I didn’t think shared my positions on the issues most important to me, let alone my core values.

For others on the left – or on the right – who don’t quite see where I’m coming from yet, let me explain: even though the Green Party or other third parties likely have little chance of winning (thanks to an electoral system, and ballot access and debate-exclusion rules designed to keep it that way – not necessarily because of their unpopularity), they nonetheless serve an important function in the American political system. That function is keeping the two major parties honest. When voters in Illinois were faced with the choice between re-electing a corrupt governor (the Democrat) or electing the candidate of a party whose last governor is still in federal prison (the Republican), many of them stayed home, but many others voted for the Green Party candidate.

But honesty isn’t just about refusal to take bribes or not attempting to sell off Senate seats—it’s about politicians sticking to the important promises they made on the campaign trail. President Obama promised Americans healthcare reform; he promised us the repeal of the “Defense” of Marriage Act; he promised the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy; he promised to be a “fierce advocate” for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Americans; he promised a long list of progressive changes to come. I didn’t vote for him in 2008 because I doubted his ability to make good on those promises; come 2012, if at least most of those promises have not been fulfilled, then I plan on not voting for him again.

Politicians regularly take the money and votes of their constituents, and then turn around and ignore their concerns. Yet come next election-day, they cry foul when a third-party candidate challenges them because they failed to govern honestly or in accordance with the values of the people who supported them. A prime example of this is the behavior of the New York State Democrats: for years they took thousands upon thousands of dollars from gay and lesbian donors; yet when they finally got their majority in the senate, gay rights issues went right out the door. As someone who donated hours of his time, this taught me a vital lesson: next time around, campaign for the Greens.

The Democrats or Republicans might complain about how other candidates are stealing “their votes”, but the reality is that it is they who are doing the stealing. With one hand, they take our checks, our hours of knocking on doors, our hours of volunteering, and our votes, and with the other they propose bills which directly harm us or ignore the issues that are dearest to our hearts.