As election day soon approaches, there may be some voters who are ready to hit the polls, a firm decision in mind, while others may be a little more hesitant, not quite sure of who to vote for just yet.
However, not everyone will be narrowing their decision to voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
“In the November elections, if folks don’t like one party or they don’t like one candidate or the other, they don’t have to vote what’s called a ‘straight party ticket,'” said Dorothy Kennedy, the Lubbock County Elections Administrator. “They can vote each individual race all the way through the ballot.”
Kennedy says with more third-party candidates on the ballot, it provides the voters more choices to choose from.
“We may not agree with every candidate that’s on there, you may not like them, but it’s really important for you to go ahead and vote,” said Kennedy. “We [elections office] really feel like this November it’ll be really interesting to see at the end of the night straight-party and non-straight party.”
Three major names in the world of third-party political candidates vying for the presidency: Jill Stein representing the Green Party, Darrell Castle representing the Constitution Party and Gary Johnson representing the Libertarian Party.
Kerry McKennon, the County Coordinator for the Libertarian Party of Texas weighs in.
While McKennon would like to see Johnson become the first Libertarian president, he’s more concerned that some of America may be voting for either Trump or Clinton for the wrong reasons, or even worse, choosing to not vote at all.
“If you say, ‘I’m voting for this one because I don’t like the other one,’ you’re not voting for somebody, you’re voting against somebody,” said McKennon who believes that while voting for third-party candidates has always been an option, it often gets overlooked. He says that if Johnson, or any third-party candidate, is able to make their way onto the debate stage, it may help make voters more aware of all their options.
“Aren’t all the candidates worth you looking at them? You should do you research, and go in knowing who you want to vote for and who’s your choice, not who might win or who might lose or who you’re going to vote against. It should be who you think is the best option for you as an individual, community then your county then your state and your country.
My vote doesn’t belong to anybody, even Gary Johnson doesn’t own my vote, but I’m going to cast my vote based on who’s best for the country and I encourage everybody to do that too as opposed to voting against Clinton or against Trump.”
