Political options don’t add up

By  JEREMY STITSWORTH, Staff Reporter ¦

Imagine you’re getting a burger and the cashier asks if you want ketchup or mustard. If you don’t like either of them, you decide to go with mayonnaise. Unfortunately, when it comes to our political system, it’s not that simple. You only have two choices. In this case, it’s Republican or Democrat, but what if you don’t like the candidates they’ve selected to represent them?

America is stuck in a duopoly with these two political parties in winner-takes-all elections. What’s worse is that these supposed leaders of the country can never agree on simple answers to simple situations. In fact, it’s as if they create policies to undermine the other and make their opponents look foolish or exclude their input. You know, kind of how when you were a kid in your treehouse and put up a sign that said, “NO GIRLS ALLOWED,” to keep out your little sister.

In the United States, we actually have many different political parties such as the Libertarian Party, the Independent Party, the Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party just to name a few of them.

The problem with this is that they never have enough votes to make a real impact on elections. They don’t even get a spot in the national debates. Each candidate from a third party is required to get 15 percent of the electorate to even appear on the ballot and participate in debates.

Now, Donald Trump took the presidency with only 27 percent of the voting population and third-party candidates only need about half of that to get on the ballot. To me, more parties means more options, which in turn leads to more voters and ultimately more democracy, and that is what will make our country great again.