John Rachel

This references my previous article, The “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” Pledge Campaign, which to my pleasant surprise has resulted in quite a bit of positive support.

Several commenters asked me how I came up with the numbers, and how realistic was it to think that we could get 50,000,000 folks to sign the pledge to vote for Jill Stein, the target for “activating” the promise to vote for her.  Meaning, if 50,000,000 voters took the pledge, they could all vote for her, secure in the knowledge that they would not be throwing their vote away — a vote of conscience for a minor-party candidate would be considered “throwing their vote away” if it resulted in a victory by whichever major-party candidate they happened to despise.

I said that 50,000,000 would “guarantee” a plurality win?  How did I arrive at that figure?

Well, there are no “guarantees” in a system using unverifiable electronic voting machines, so we can just give this our best estimate:  There are 146,311,000 registered voters in the U.S.  In the 2012 election, 126,144,000 voted.  If we assume a quite formidable turnout of 130,000,000 for 2016, 50,000,000 represents a 38% plurality.  This would allow as much as a 12% spread between Trump and Clinton, e.g. 25% Trump and 37% Clinton.  Actually, some predict that it might go the other way, meaning as much as 37% for Trump and 25% for Clinton, on the expectation that Stein would be pulling the “progressive” vote away from Clinton.  The most current polls support that direction.  But as long as Donald and Hillary split the 62% not voting for Jill Stein with 12% or less of a spread between them, Jill wins by plurality.

I also said that 50,000,000 was realistic — it was an achievable target — and showed how the power of an exponential multiplier provides us plenty of time to get this organized and done.  At the same time, we should recognize that the arithmetic alone begs the question of whether there are people out there who are even receptive to a third-party option, who are sufficiently disgusted with the way this election is shaping up to jump off the major-party bandwagons.

Again, we can only speculate.  But a few factors are encouraging.

As cited in a Salon article, Gallup polls for the fifth year in a row indicate that over 40% of voters identify themselves as “independents”, so disenchanted are they with the two-party system which has defined electoral politics for much of recent history.

More specifically, deep dissatisfaction with the major-party choice of Trump vs. Clinton is evidenced by historic levels of unfavorability ratings.  Clinton is at 55% and rising, Trump is at 70% and could go either way.  But just taking them at these current levels means that there is a minimum 25% of voters who strongly disapprove of both.  This 25% translates to more than 36,000,000 registered voters — a huge number of voters who apparently prefer to vote for neither.  If they can be directed Jill Stein’s way, this is a big head start toward our goal of 50,000,000!

Lastly, Jill Stein has taken a bold and powerful stand on an issue which garnered much favor and enthusiasm in the Bernie revolution, that of free college education.  Currently, some 42,000,000 college graduates are saddled with onerous debts, just trying to obtain skills and credentials which will give them a fighting chance for a decent job in our highly competitive and compromised job market.  Jill Stein has committed to a full forgiveness of student loan debt if she becomes president.  Talk about reaching out to young people and appealing to them to vote in their own interests!

I don’t have to tell you that I think the “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” pledge idea could be a real game-changer.  It risks nothing, demands little of voters other than a few minutes of their time and a commitment to attentive, fearless voting, should the campaign succeed, yet offers the possibility of a paradigm shift in electoral politics.  Finally, the stranglehold of the two major parties will be broken, and a new broad range of potential solutions will be brought center-stage to the national conversation.

But good ideas are not automatic.  Good ideas only get traction if people take the time to understand them, then actively share their understanding with others.  The language of the pledge makes this necessity clear:

“I will now contact two other people who I respect and trust, let them know there is a real alternative to the Clinton vs. Trump political spectacle, explain that if we frustrated voters join together, we will not be throwing our votes away, we can elect a great president, America’s first female president no less.”

The corporate-controlled main stream media did everything it could to marginalize and destroy the Bernie Sanders campaign.  It has also been completely successful at keeping Jill Sanders an invisibility on the political stage.

Therefore, it’s up to us:  Each person tells two others, who each tell two others, who . . . 

It’s the power of numbers.

It’s the power of people over plutocracy, the voice of individual citizens shouting down the mind-numbing mantras of the 1%, mouthed by their brain-dead talking heads and political puppets.

There are 61,450,000 “independents” out there somewhere.  There are 36,578,000 voters who think neither Clinton nor Trump should be president.  There are 42,000,000 students struggling to pay for their college education.

We have work to do!