Image by Edmond Dantès

San Joseans play Twister with logic on social media defending why it’s somehow not a good idea to vote for the best candidate. The Link publication disagrees and says: the best vote is the honest vote.

For those who don’t know but probably still do it anyway, strategic voting is voting based on who’s more likely to win in a given riding, or to vote for a “lesser evil” to stop a “greater evil.”

Essentially, strategic voting tells you to vote for a candidate you “have to” vote for and not for the one you want to vote for.

The pessimism it takes to believe change is impossible, multiplied by the number of voters feeling the same way, might just be why nothing changes beyond two parties mud-wrestling for a chance to please their benefactors.

Being pessimistic does not make you deep.

Strategic voting enforces what looks a lot like a two-party system, one that has put us in a place where we have to decide between two underwhelming leaders, to say the least.

The moral superiority of someone saying, smugly, that you have to vote for one to stop the other is absurd.

The pessimism is not productive, and appears to serve little other than to get validation from others.“Common sense” is used as coercion to maintain the status quo.

Saying someone will “split the vote” is a shaming tactic that serves only to prop up the dominant system.

The elitism that goes behind who is and isn’t electable can even be seen on the ballot, where you can see all of the candidates who are independent, or who didn’t have a $100,000 campaign budget for their riding, for the first time.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if, instead of blindly ticking boxes based on party alone, we voted for the candidate that best networked with their community, based on their own name and values?

Shouldn’t the future of our country to be more than a game of numbers or a cringe competition?

Having multiple choices is great, if we actually consider and vote for the other choices we would like to see in government.

You are not spoiling your ballot by voting your conscience, the result of your vote is there, and it represents you and other like-minded citizens, regardless of who wins.

Optimism is not foolishness, nor does it mean you’re helping the worst of the options by splitting the vote.

Optimism is courage and determination in the face of a disappointing, depressing situation.

You’re more rational for daring to hope and try than some puffed-up jerk on Facebook, who tries to make people feel bad for voting for what they want over what they deem realistic.

If no one takes a step, things will never move forwarded differently, obviously things might look different.