The election tragedy: Who’s going to win, the Republicans or the Democrats? If you’re like the vast majority of Americans these days you’re not entirely happy with either choice for president, in this case Texas Gov. George W. Bush or Vice President Al Gore. You also probably realize that one of these parties is most likely to win. So you pick one of these two candidates and hope for the best.

That’s if you bother to vote at all. Most Americans these days don’t even do that much. These people freely give up a right colonial patriots fought for, African Americans struggled to obtain and women had to petition to get. That is the first part of the tragedy.

The second is the fact that the American people are basically limited to two choices for president. A third or even a fourth political party is not just a possibility. They exist. They also have practically no chance of winning.

Why? They can’t win simply because most Americans believe they can’t win. Just like Tinkerbell, they die without that belief.

A third party would do more than offer one more choice for our nation’s highest office. Reporters and citizens would have to stop seeing issues as black and white. They would have to stop seeing one candidate as being for something and one candidate as being against it.

The fact is that the truer test of character is not how a person deals with an absolute, it’s how they deal with the situations in between. A third party would bring this reality into political debates. Candidates would no longer be seen as for something or against it. Candidates could be seen as taking stands on the areas between absolutes.

Is it possible for a third party to win? Yes, but it’ll take a lot of time and money. It will take time because politicians will have to overcome decades of a two-party tradition and realize that more options exist. It will take money because other parties are going to have to spend much more on advertising to get their message to the people. They will have to spend that much more convincing people that they can run the country and that they have a chance of winning.

I find it somewhat depressing that this upcoming presidential election would be the perfect place for third-party candidates to be heard - if they had started campaigning four years ago. Now, they cannot reasonably expect to win. If they start campaigning now, however, in four more years they might have a shot.

I’m not saying other political parties are the answer. I’m not suggesting that everyone should vote for a third party. I am saying that the American people deserve more choices than they have. They deserve the candidates to take stands and give real answers to tough questions. We should make a stand and demand these choices.

Above all, I’m saying people should vote. Even the choices we have now mean nothing if people do not exercise the privilege of voting, a privilege we did not come by easily. If we want the best government possible, we have to come together to make our wishes known.

Matt Mercieca
computer science and
English senior