Why I Voted Third Party

I originally published this in the Beloit Round Table, which will be distributed Monday November 5th.  You all get a sneak preview, you lucky people:).

Ok, Ok, I’ll confess to voting third party !

                Last Wednesday, I cast an early ballot with the write-in slot marked for Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party, and on Tuesday will stand for election to the Electoral College on his behalf.  My reasoning is simple- both major party candidates promise war, Austerity, capitalist health care, environmental degradation, and patriarchy.  I cannot morally support the president who ordered more airstrikes in one year than Bush did in eight, who overruled his own HHS Department to prevent young women from using birth control without their fathers‘ permission, failed to defend our precious natural resources and abandoned his central promise of civil rights protection in employment and housing to the Gay community.  Nor can I support a Republican.  I’m left with a choice between two war-mongering, theocratic climate change deniers who will continue to accelerate the evolving exploitation of the workers.  This is unacceptable to me, and last summer, I began seeking a qualified third-party candidate for whom to cast a sincere protest vote.

                Rocky Anderson is that candidate.  (At least in the opinions of myself, Ralph Nader and Barbara Ehrenreich among others).  While I respect Jill Stein and Stewart Alexander, neither of them have ever served in government.  Rocky was Mayor of Salt Lake City from 2000-2008, during which time he cut city greenhouse gas emissions by 31 percent, expanded contracts with unionized labor, grew the surplus by 60 percent by defunding failed anti-drug programs, and created the Family to Family program to assist immigrants who had lost family members to deportation.  He also fought for and passed a municipal version of the Gay Civil Rights law conveniently abandoned by the president.  That’s right- Gay Rights.  In Utah.  Successfully.  (He also passed an ordinance raising the minimum wage, but it was struck down by the court.)  Anderson has also served as a board member of Planned Parenthood of Utah and Mayors Against Illegal Guns, as well as president of the Utah ACLU, and founded the High Road for Human Rights group.  He’s ranked as one of the fifteen greenest politicians in America, as well as in the Human Rights Campaign’s “Top 10 Straight Advocates for LGBT Americans“.  Most impressively, Anderson organized the massive 2006 anti-war rallies which greeted President Bush’s visit with a call for peace.  Now, he’s running for president, on the ballot in 15 states, and with recognized write-in status in some 25 others, including Wisconsin. 

                Anderson is calling for single-payer healthcare, an immediate end to the undeclared drone war, restoration of Civil Liberties, Public Employment for the jobless,forgiveness of student debt, legalizing hemp, abolishing the regressive Payroll tax cap, and repealing the regressive Bush tax cuts. 

If supporting someone who not only calls for what I truly believe in, but has actually implemented many of those same principles in an accomplished government career is a protest vote, so be it.  I cast my first presidential vote for Rocky Anderson, and I’m proud to have done so.