Ok, people, listen up . . .

. . . I did not waste my vote!

For many years now I have become more and more disillusioned with the two-party system in this country.  We are trapped, forced into choosing between the favorites of the party elites.  This year’s election was a perfect example of this.  By the time the Democrats were done, the party elite had given us a politician so polarizing that many independent voters in this country, people who had voted for a Democratic candidate in the past, would not vote for her.  And the Republicans, they couldn’t even get together behind one of their own; instead, they nominated a celebrity, a mercurial self-promoter who has in the past professed to being a Democrat.  Most who voted for one or the other of the major candidates did so, not in belief in the character and competency of that candidate, but in an attempt to stop the election of the other.

I could not bring myself to vote for either of the candidates.  I looked to other candidates, representatives of the various ‘lesser’ parties of this country, but not one candidate proved themselves worthy of the vote that I would cast.

Finally, as a protest to the system we are saddled with, I wrote in the name of a public figure whose leadership I believed in.

What were you thinking . . . you wasted your vote!

I’ve had a number of people from both sides of the political spectrum tell me that.  I wasted my vote. 

I am about to lay some wisdom on you folks, so listen up.  Are you ready?

“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”  -- John Quincy Adams

In my mind, my vote is an important reflection of my hopes and dreams.  It represents the vision I have for this land.  To claim that I was ‘wasting my vote’ because I didn’t vote for one of the two major party candidates is rude and ridiculous.  By that same way of thinking, any Washingtonian who voted for Trump was wasting his or her vote, as the Democratic candidate has carried this state in every election since 1988.

Yes, my friends, I voted for a write-in candidate for president of the United States.  One hundred and two thousand, four hundred and fifteen other Washingtonians also placed a write-in vote for president.  I’d like to think that these write-in votes may have been an inspiration for four of Washington’s members of the Electoral College to change their votes and not place them for the candidate who won the states popular vote as is customary.

FYI, my write-in vote for president of the United States went to Colin Powell.