My credentials as a third-party voter are impeccable. In 1964, the first presidential election in which I was eligible to vote, I wrote in Socialist Labor Party presidential candidate Eric Hass and vice-presidential candidate Henning Blomen. My effort made not a ripple. Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater, winning 61% of the popular vote, and proceeded to mire the United States in the Vietnam War—but, at the same time, he championed landmark civil and voting rights legislation and his agenda of a Great Society expanded access to public services and aided rural development.

In 1968 my vote went to Dick Gregory, the peace and civil rights activist who ran with the Freedom and Peace Party. Over the ensuing decades, my presidential choices included Dr. Benjamin Spock (1972), Ralph Nader (1996, 2000) and Jill Stein (2012, 2016).

Meanwhile, down ballot, I voted for Democrats, including myself in two successful primaries and general elections to the Rhode Island State Senate.

In the forthcoming election, the policies of the progressive third-party candidates—Cornel West, Jill Stein and Claudia De la Cruz—align with my views much more than those of Kamala Harris. All three want to halt Israel’s deadly and devastating assaults on Gaza and elsewhere by stopping military assistance to the Netanyahu government. They are against the bloated and unaudited defense budget generally and want more spending on social programs and massive efforts to save the planet. They want to curtail the rapacity of billionaires through higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy. All of them view the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 with horror (as does Kamala Harris). And so on. Sadly, not one of them has a chance of winning.

Mathematically—and politically—either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will become president. How or why our electoral system has evolved so as to marginalize third parties is irrelevant. We are confronted with a stark choice: between Harris, who fundamentally respects the rule of law, or Trump, who aims to refashion the law, and the Constitution, to fit his dictatorial ends.

In 2020, the political theorist and critic Noam Chomsky commented on a similar dilemma when Biden and Trump were the two major candidates. Biden did not mirror Chomsky’s values or opinions, but Chomsky viewed Trump as an authoritarian and fascist. For him the situation demanded a vote for Biden: “[I]f you want to vote against Trump, you have to push the lever for the Democrats,” Chomsky said in an interview with Salon. “If you don’t push the lever for the Democrats, you are assisting Trump. We can argue about a lot of things, but not arithmetic.”

Simple arithmetic also demonstrates the decisive roll third-party votes have played in recent presidential elections. In 2000, Al Gore lost Florida, and ultimately the election, to George W. Bush, by 540 votes, while Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate, won more than 97,000 Floridian votes. If some of these presumably progressive voters had voted for Gore, the ultimate result could have been different. And in 2016, in the three swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Jill Stein’s vote totals were well in excess of the margin by which Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. Trump placed three right-wing justices on the U.S. Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade was trashed. The impact of third-party votes in close races cannot be ignored.

For many people, Trump is a bully and a racist who has no respect for democratic norms or the rule of law. Yet some who hold this view think their principles would be compromised by voting for Harris. These conscientious individuals should ponder Trump’s July 26th speech to a Christian nationalist audience promising that if they elect him they “won’t have to vote anymore.” Around this time Trump also declared that Israel’s principal problem in Gaza was simply poor public relations. Anti-war activists will find no rationality or respect for First Amendment niceties in a Trump Administration.

There is no guarantee Kamala Harris will halt military aid to Israel; but within the confines of her role in the Biden Administration, she has indicated a willingness to move in that direction. On the other hand, Trump will not rein in his good pal Netanyahu, and he will be seeking counsel from his favorite Middle Eastern expert, son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has expressed a desire to turn the beaches of Gaza into a tourist destination.

There is more at stake in this election than the need to end Israel’s rampage in the Middle East. A vote for a third-party candidate instead of Harris, while satisfying to the ego, will increase the likelihood that Trump will be positioned to continue his assault on reproductive freedom, his generous tax breaks for the wealthy, his denial of climate change, his deregulation mania and his exaltation of white Christian nationalism.

In 2016, the essayist and activist, Rebecca Solnit was no fan of Hillary Clinton but saw the election of Donald Trump as “unbearable to contemplate.” She famously remarked that a vote is “not a valentine” but more like a “chess move.” After the election, Solnit pointed out, one is free to criticize, demonstrate and organize against the person one voted for.

Kamala Harris is not perfect, but neither am I. Imperfect me will vote for imperfect Kamala against a man who cannot distinguish a lie from the truth and who demonstrates daily that he is nowhere near the infallible paragon he claims to be.

Stephen Fortunato

Before serving for thirteen years as an Associate Justice of the Rhode Island Superior Court, Stephen Fortunato was for nearly three decades a civil rights lawyer and activist.