On Voting Third Party

       As the 2016 presidential election came and went, many topics were discussed.  How could someone vote for Trump?  How could you vote for Hillary?  How could you vote for either?  After the media made endless attempts to humiliate/attack/expose either of the top 2 parties' candidates in the heated and tense election, a new group formed.  It was not the typical Green Party members or American Independents that stuck with their teams that would make the big difference in the outcome; it was a new group, those who might have identified with Republicans or Democrats yet vehemently denied offering either of their party's candidates a spot as their President of the United States of America.  In my opinion, their decision to vote third party was problematic.
       I should note there is a case to be made for voting third party.  People are still exercising their rights to vote, which is important, and they are generally voting for people whose policies they truly support.  Yet, should those third party voters have instead cast their votes for say, Hillary, she would have won the electoral college and thus the role as president.  Why vote Hillary, one might ask?  Why vote for someone with whose policies/presence they disagree?  A term that was thrown around a lot during the season was "the lesser of two evils" and that is my main argument here today.
       In a world where the American government holds the power that it does, it is the duty of voters to make informed decisions so as to not let society fall apart.  Part of the knowledge they must carry with themselves to the voting booth is statistics: who really has a chance at winning?  The third party votes time and time again collectively add up to around 3% of all votes.  And while in the past, there may have been good enough candidates on either side to let their votes just represent their beliefs, that was not the case with this election.  Of course, one must take into account my bias: I believe Donald Trump is the most unfit person to run a business, nevermind any country.  So when a third party voter says that both main candidates are awful, I believe they need to choose the lesser of those 2 evils.  They must recognize their votes for the third party have no amount of power that could excuse them from turning their backs on the millions of Americans that would and have suffered in Trump's America.
      It's too late now to change what they did in 2016, but I truly hope they can understand this in 2020.  I hope they consider that acts of discrimination have skyrocketed in rates under President Trump and his rhetoric.  I hope they stop and think about the hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who had no say in what their lives would be but now want to make something out of it.  I want them to think about all of the lives they could change: all the children who might not be separated from their families in the future, whatever is left of Earth might be helped to stay intact, nuclear war might be avoided.  And if they cannot have compassion, they might realize that their decisions will affect their own lives: war and climate change do not discriminate.  Of course I have a problem with those who voted for Trump, but there is little I can say to change most of their minds.  For those with the ability to reason that he is bad for America, recognize this: he is the worst for this country.  Do your part.  You're intelligent—but you need to be smart.