Beyond the red and blue: 3rd party voting

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As students at a liberal art college, we're frequently asked to look beyond binaries - to deconstruct the dominant narratives that, for most of our lives, we've been trained to accept. We're invited to seek a diverse plurality of opinions, voices and experiences to allow us to form a complex understanding of truth. Yet, as the 2012 Election looms near, we're confined by a two-party coin toss: Romney or Obama? Republican or Democrat? Red or Blue?
According to a Gallup poll released earlier this year, a record-high 40 percent of Americans reject both political parties, identifying themselves as independent voters. In the current election cycle, the candidates' flip-flopping and focus on personality rather than policy has only exacerbated this staggering rate of voter dissatisfaction. If October's series of policy debates were any indication, both President Obama and Governor Romney have demonstrated their inability to distinguish their vision for America as one that is drastically different from their opponent's.
We have to cut through the political rhetoric and ask ourselves, if Romney or Obama is elected, will the status quo really change? Both uphold a two-party system that leaves candidates essentially saying the same thing, but disagreeing in name or implementation only. Voters seem left without any real choice.
So whom do we choose?
This is the second Presidential election I'll be voting in, and the first for a third party candidate. Yeah, I know the chance of my candidate winning the election is nonexistent. I've heard it a thousand times: "You're throwing your vote away." But my vote isn't about winning. It's about sending a message - a message that I hope, one day, might be received by our major political parties.
The third-party candidates on this year's ballot have been excluded from the network debates and mainstream news primarily because they're deemed not worthy of the column space or the airtime. They don't fulfill the horse race that reduces political ideology to red or blue, right or left. Their absence from media coverage is fundamentally detrimental to democracy, denying us the chance to explore multiple viewpoints that we might find more fitting to our own personal beliefs. Writing off the Greens, Constitutionalists and Libertarians as "fringe groups" won't work anymore. The fringe is becoming exceedingly large.
Our country was founded upon a revolutionary spirit - a sensibility that citizens should not have to placidly accept the infractions and inconsistencies of its government. Unpopular as it may be, third party voting similarly replicates the action taken by our Founding Fathers: to speak out against systems that privilege the voices of few over many.
Rejecting the Republican and Democratic parties is symbolic - for now. But it's not entirely futile. When I sent my absentee ballot off in the mail last week, I knew I was making a decision in good conscience. As a citizen, that's my responsibility. I can only hope that others will do the same.
So you can think what you'd like about my vote being a wasted one. I'd argue that a wasted vote is one for someone you don't totally believe in.

- Brelage is a senior from Indianapolis, Ind., majoring in English writing. She is the founder of the Young Americans for Liberty at DePauw.