A vote for Gentry Lange is a vote for Gentry Lange. Period.

Posted on October 24, 2005

Debunking the "Spoiler" Myth.

The grumbling has already begun.

"A vote for Lange is a vote for Irons".

"We need to vote for the lesser evil".

"Voting for Lange is a wasted vote".

Well, I reject that undemocratic sentiment.

I reject the so-called "spoiler effect" and the way that the Democratic Party has used it to take advantage of progressive voters for decades.

The governorship of Washington State, both state legislative houses and the Supreme Court in Washington State are controlled by one party: The Democrats.

If they wished to change the system to prevent candidates with only a minority of the electorate's support from being elected to office, they would have. They could do it overnight.

They could support systems like Proportional Representation and Instant Run-Off Voting and eliminate the spoiler effect altogether. Voting systems that the Greens have promoted for years.

But they do not. They like the system just the way it is. Under the "spoiler" system, they use fear of a villain to brush aside their own embarrasing actions and personal flaws. Voting for the lesser evil, we've gotten worse Democrats, not better ones.

Democrats who voted for NAFTA, the PATRIOT Act, the war in Iraq, CAFTA, who have rolled over for the worst Republicans when they've illegally purged voters from the rolls and used intimidation tactics to prevent them from voting.

It was the Green Party that provided the voter lists to the ACLU of Florida in 2000 to allow them to sue the state for illegally disenfranchising African American voters. It was the Green Party that initiated the Ohio recount in 2004 in light of blatant electoral fraud and voter intimidation. Meanwhile Kerry and Gore were waving the white flag and telling us to "get over it and move on".

By continuing to vote for them, you are putting your stamp of approval on everything they do that betrays your values, because the major party alternative is even worse.

I prefer to set my bar a little bit higher than that.

I myself am a former Democrat and I can describe the experience of a progressive in that party to you like this: it's like standing in a line fighting for things you don't quite believe in because you've been led to believe that if you wait long enough, they'll get around to fighting for what YOU believe in.

After a while, you realize that the line doesn't move.

That every four years a progressive will have the opportunity to fall in love with a Eugene McCarthy or a Dennis Kucinich or a Jesse Jackson or a Jerry Brown. You'll fight your ass off for them, you'll brush off comments about throwing your vote away and the ever-so-popular "I love him, but he can't win". And then you'll be ignored, marginalized, defeated, watch the winning candidate take NONE of your issues, and be expected to "grow up", fall in line and support whatever tall, vanilla, inoffensive factory model they've rolled out as the "perfect candidate".

If I had to do that every four years, I would go insane.

Ron Sims has coasted to re-election before with a very comfortable margin of victory -- the last time with a win in the neighborhood of 70%. Before Gentry even entered this race, Sims' numbers had plummeted to 52% -- an 18% drop. If this race is close, it's his own fault.

To have people like the operator of blogger sites like Horsesass.org speak to me with such a sense of arrogant entitlement to my vote is the greatest insult of all.

Elected officials do not own my vote. Ron Sims does not own my vote. David Irons does not own my vote. Not even Gentry Lange owns my vote.

I do.

My vote is GIVEN when it is EARNED. My vote is my voice and my power in a democratic society. It is my check on the power of those who make policies that affect my life, my community and my planet. It is my greatest power.

And the candidate many are trying to scare me into voting for, Ron Sims, would sell that power away to corporate interests who can make it disappear with the touch of a button or steal it and give it to someone else.

And that I will never vote for. That I will never support. Gentry isn't perfect. No one is. But what he ISN'T is crooked, arrogant and he has a near religious convinction in the sanctity of my right to vote and for that he's EARNED my vote.

I serve as Tabling Coordinator for the Seattle Greens. I will tell you that I've talked face to face about this race with hundreds of people this year. More than most of these Democratic bloggers have, I'll wager.

And I'll tell you what I've seen.

People are pissed off at Ron Sims. They're pissed about the Critical Areas Ordinance. They're pissed that he's playing "hear no evil, see no evil" with Election irregularities. They're pissed about the Southwest Airlines deal. And these people that I'm talking about are not Republicans, they're Democrats.

I've been thanked at least thirty times for having a Green in this race, because these people had written off voting for Sims and were disgusted with the idea of voting for a Republican. Gentry is giving them a progressive alternative.

I've seen Democrats openly talking about voting for David Irons because they want Sims out and a new Dem in four years. Gentry is giving them a progressive alternative.

And the fact that he got 7% with NO MEDIA coverage should give you an idea of just how pissed these people are.

Let me tell you why my vote for Gentry isn't wasted, because instead of trying to fix what can't be fixed, I'll be building a new alternative.

Everything we have and now consider the bare minimum for a just and decent society - minimum wage laws, the 40-hour work week, the abolition of child labor, unemployment insurance, women getting the right to vote, the abolition of slavery, social security, public education, the direct election of U.S. Senators - were all won because of third party activists.

When these proposals first appeared - in the platforms of parties like the Labor Greenback Party, the Socialist Party and the Progressive Party - they were fought tooth and nail by Democrat and Republican alike.

It was only by having the courage to vote for these parties and them gaining momentum that the two major parties adopted their issues as their own and put them into law to protect their own power.

Far from a wasted vote, a vote for a third party can in fact be the most powerful vote one can cast.

The Greens have over 220 elected officials in this country, including the Seattle School Board President, Brita Butler-Wall and fellow Board director, Sally Soriano. We have John Eder, a State Representative in Maine who was just re-elected with 56% of the vote. We have Jason West, the mayor of New Paltz, NY who forced the issue of marriage equality into the national spotlight. And we have Matt Gonzalez who nearly won Mayor of San Francisco last year with 46% of the vote after his Democratic opponent outspent him 10-1.

And we did that with elections laws that are written to exclude us or bury us. We did that with a fraction of the money of the major parties - and none of their corporate money. And we did it with people like these bloggers spewing the same fear-mongering, tired and anti-democratic drivel about wasted votes and spoilers.

All the while no one is stopping Sims from taking votes BACK from Gentry by adopting pieces of his platform. He has every right to do what FDR did with Socialist Norman Thomas' platform. Steal his entire program and make it his own, as Roosevelt did with The New Deal.

But Sims doesn't do that. Because he thinks he owns my voice and my vote. I'm sorry, Ron, but the only vote you own is your own. You don't even own these bloggers' votes - though they're all but offering them to you on an altar and making no demands for it.

I control and cherish my vote. And I'm giving it to Gentry Lange. The man who earned it.

To quote the late, great Eugene Debs, I would rather vote for what I want and not get it, than vote for what I don't want...and get it.

Sincerely,

Mike Gillis
Tabling Coordinator
Green Party of Seattle

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A vote for Gentry Lange is a vote for Gentry Lange. Period.