The Effects of Protest Votes

Throughout this election, many different news outlets, famous celebrities, and politicians have advocated for the benefits of voting for certain candidates, whether if they were to be genuine votes or even just out of protest. However, I would argue that although it is beneficial for people to vote in general because this aids the democratic system as a whole (through self-representation), overall protest votes to third parties are detrimental, since their effects are generally the same as just abstaining. For example, in Florida, a state generally known for being a "battleground state" and a "swing state" because of how many electoral votes the state has and because there is a major political divide throughout the state, around 3% of voters voted for someone part of a third party. And as we all know, Donald Trump ended up winning Florida by a few hundred thousand votes, a surprising margin for the state considering that in recent history, it has generally swung to the democrat party. Now, if the voters who had given their "protest votes" had either voted for Clinton or Trump based on similarities between their personal beliefs and these candidates' political views, they could have actually changed the outcome of Florida's electoral votes, since in theory, these people could have swung the state towards Clinton. However, because they instead chose to protest against Clinton and Trump by not even voting at all, their effect on the Florida election didn't change the outcome, since only the votes towards the two major candidates were the determining factors of where the state swung. Now, although you may argue that the whole point of a "protest vote" is to just vent frustration at the political system as a whole, I believe that there are much more beneficial ways to do so whether they are through becoming politically active in local communities, participating in rallies or protests, or even just voicing their frustrations to others around them. All of these things, no matter how effective or not, are still more politically beneficial to a person who wants change because they allow people to directly impact politics to a certain extent rather than just pacifistically voting in protest. In my opinion, the entire of idea of giving protest votes is poor because in many situations, the people giving such votes are politically uneducated as they choose to not at least research specific third parties to find a fitting one to them before voting. Instead, people just say, "I'll vote Jill Stein because I heard she was the most liberal" or "I'll vote Gary Johnson because he's more of a Republican than Donald Trump" without even researching either candidate and their views. Furthermore, instead of giving votes in protest and not contributing whatsoever towards an honest election, people should at least research who they are voting for in the first place and find a third party that they genuinely support, because after all, although third party votes generally don't affect the actual outcome of the election, they can at least represent your true viewpoints. Take Utah, for example. In this state, even though thousands of Mormon Republicans didn't support Donald Trump for personal and religious reasons, they still found an independent politician, Evan McMullin who truly represented their beliefs and voted for him. Because of this, McMullin actually received 20% of the state's popular vote, which affected the outcome of the state's overall popular votes in a way that represented the genuine beliefs of individuals throughout Utah instead of just representing the contrived "protest votes" against Donald Trump and towards a random politician they didn't care about. So in conclusion, I believe that protest votes are just a pacifistic and uneducated way of going against the bipartisan system which influences elections in a very negative way. Instead of giving protest votes, I think people should either find a third party candidate they genuinely believe in before voting so that at least their vote represents their views, vote for a Democrat or Republican who resembles their views the most, become politically active, or just abstain.