There is a pretty good argument to be made that the reason George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in 2000 is due the votes the Ralph Nader garnered. Undoubtedly most of those votes would have gone for Gore. Also undoubtedly a Gore presidency would have been head and shoulders above the cluster that was the Bush Presidency. The world and our country would have been in a much better place than what has been left to us by Bush-Cheney disaster.
I understand folk’s disenchantment with both the major parties, Democrats and Republicans. I do not know if it is still common, but in years past in some states when you registered to vote you had to declare party affiliation. I usually registered as an independent which in many ways disenfranchised me. I have lived in states where the election was settled in the primaries, and as independent I could not vote. Having said all that, I generally vote Democrat and occasionally third party. I do remember on one occasion voting for a Republican when it was known without a doubt that the Democrat was a huge crook. In that case he was running on his son’s name recognition.
The coming election scares me. It scares me that it still seems so close. While I am not wild about either major party candidate I am of the firm opinion that if Trump were to become our President it would make George W. look like George Washington. The reality is that none of the third party candidates has a chance of winning. What they do have is a chance of pulling votes away from the only sane candidate of the two major parties. This is not the year to cast a protest vote for a Libertarian, Green or Constitutionalist. Well maybe the Constitution party! The choice between Clinton and Trump is too stark and too dangerous.
However, Timothy Egan, a New York Times editorialist says all this much better that I could. Here is a link to his editorial: The Conscience of the Contrarian Voter