The Central Importance of Independent Politics

A Response to Chomsky et al.’s Advocacy of Lesser-Evil Voting

As Green Party Presidential candidate Howie Hawkins put it in a recent online discussion of the election, what is most astonishing about the public statements from prominent people on the left advocating voting for Joe Biden is that they don’t even call for a Green vote in battleground states. “Now it’s vote for Biden everywhere without any conditions, with no demands on the Democrats,” Howie wrote, continuing “Now it’s don’t vote Green. Vote Biden everywhere without any preconditions, with no demands on the Democrats. That approach is pushing US politics to the right by setting up the elimination of the Greens as an independent left alternative on many state ballots. What happened to their left solidarity?”

That’s a good question. The Democrats have been able to use the legal system, biased of course against third parties, to disqualify Hawkins/Walker and other Green candidates from being on the ballot, despite their meeting requirements to be listed on the ballot. These efforts have succeeded in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and elsewhere. The Democrats are also attempting to make it more difficult for Greens to get on the ballot in the future; in New York, they recently tripled the number of votes required to maintain a ballot line. And we…