In this presidential election, we young voters essentially have the choice between two candidates who have already occupied the White House for four years. Both are old white, male, East Coast political veterans. For two seemingly polar opposite candidates, there’s more overlap than the media makes us think. Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are making the case this year that American democracy is at stake.
Biden has claimed Trump’s bigotry and authoritative tendencies have made the country unstable, especially in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Meanwhile, Trump argues the democrat’s alleged “election fraud” and legal prosecution against him is a threat to the country’s integrity. Yet I would argue both of these candidates ought to consider that they, along with the institutions they represent, are the cause of the decline in America’s political integrity.
This election, we must ask ourselves: how did we get these candidates? America holds some of the best entrepreneurs, scholars and doctors worldwide. We are the richest country in the world and among the most diverse. Yet through an archaic, two-party, winner-takes-all system fueled by super PACs and dark money, voters choose once again between two incompetent men who have each ultimately failed in the White House.
Since the Citizens United case passed the Supreme Court of the United States in 2010, political campaign contributions have been limitless, leaving party mega-donors at the helm of how information is promoted in these national elections. $14.4 billion was spent on the 2020 presidential election, yet only four billion dollars was raised by the candidates themselves. How can any honest candidate get their message across the country without being out-funded by these greater powers?
“The United States is a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.” — Julius Nyerere, former president of Tanzania.
The second issue is the structure of political parties themselves. Our election system has winner-takes-all, single-member elections, meaning a single candidate wins all of a territory in an election. This system, among other systemic factors, produces the organized opposition party and the incumbent party, or in other words, a two-party system.
This rigid system, along with the financial power backing elections and elected officials, has allowed our government to make bipartisan decisions directly against the people. Capitol Hill’s inclination towards war is a prime example, as both parties are financially tied to companies in the military-industrial complex. In 2008, congress voted nearly unanimously to approve the invasion of Iraq, which was passed by former President Bush. Make no mistake, the Iraq War was based on untrue accusations that were even doubted by the United Nations, but the financial and political powers in our country made it happen.
Corruption within the Democratic Party is another example of this issue, a party that has consistently rooted out progressive competition to secure its corporate-backed candidate. In 2016, we saw Bernie Sanders repeatedly suppressed in media coverage of the primary election, all to have the Democratic National Committee allocate money to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The 2020 primary wasn’t any different. When the state caucuses narrowed the field, we saw Sanders take the lead in the race, leading Biden by nearly 10 points. Before the Super Tuesday elections, the party coordinated all other competing candidates to drop out and endorse Biden, including Sanders’ progressive ally Elizabeth Warren.
If I don’t value the institutions that produced these candidates, why should I vote for either of them? Furthermore, Trump and Biden’s individual positions also reflect the brokenness and corruption of the U.S. electoral system.
Young voters not only have to pick between two deranged, old presidents, but active funders of genocide. All major candidates in this election, including third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have actively supported Benjamin Netanyahu’s brutality against Palestine. The billions of dollars allocated to Israel’s military is once again an opportunity for Washington-allied companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin to make millions on a bloody conflict. A vote for Trump or Biden prolongs the U.S.’s unjust military machine.
Few real differences exist between Biden and Trump surrounding their brutal law and order positions. Trump mobilized the National Guard to Black Lives Matter protests or superfunded the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to capture and separate immigrants. Biden has voiced support for police reform and civil rights, all the while spearheading drug crackdown legislation in 1994, which led to mass incarceration for many African Americans.
It’s predominantly the fault of America’s two-party system, which has been hijacked by big-money campaign funding and lobbying, that has produced the terrible candidates we’re faced with today. In a democracy, public pressure pushes leaders to respond to certain issues, yet both Biden and Trump know they only have to be a little less worse than the other to win the White House again. Voting for the lesser of two evils has proved to be less about pragmatism, and more about complacency.
So if you face the frustration I feel, should you vote for a third party? Should you write in your own candidate? Should you vote at all?
If anything, I’m voting in my local elections, where I know the issues closer to home and my vote counts. Too often, Americans only vote in presidential elections where their vote merely influences the state elector to cast their decision. Local politics is where visible change can occur and while political corruption creeps everywhere, you have a more powerful role in your own community. If voting for a presidential candidate requires you to give up some of your foundational values, is it really wrong to say no to the system altogether?
