By Patricia L Johnson

Sometimes in life we are faced with candidates that we don’t feel are qualified for the position so we cast our vote for a third party. The 2024 Presidential election is an excellent example.

1.88 Percent of the votes cast in the 2024 Presidential election were cast for third party and/or write-in candidates. The 1.88 Percent came to a total of 2,918,109 votes. The largest number of votes cast for a third party candidate was 862,049, but the 862 thousand votes only amounted to 0.56 % of the total votes cast. In other words, the third most popular candidate received less than one percent of the entire votes cast.

Jill Stein was the candidate that received the 862,000 votes. Think about something, Jill Stein has been running for President of the United States since 2012. After three separate elections she has only been able to obtain less than one full percent of votes cast? The problem is, had she received 45% of the votes cast it wouldn’t have made any difference.

Presidential votes are not cast for the most popular individual running, they are cast as part of our electoral system and the ONLY way a candidate can win the office of President of the United States is by winning 270 electoral votes. Donald J Trump won 312 electoral votes while Kamala Harris received only 226 electoral votes.

Electoral votes are cast indirectly by registered voters. Prior to an election, the political parties choose potential electors. During the election, registered voters vote for the elector of their choice by casting a ballot. That elector then votes, supposedly, for the candidate receiving the highest number of votes in their state.

The difference in the number of popular votes cast for Trump and Harris in the 2024 election was only 2,284.967. We already know the number of third party (non-count) votes cast in the 2024 election is 2,918,109.

I wonder where we would be today if the 2.9 million third party votes cast would have been cast for either Trump and/or Harris?

Would we have taken over the country of Venezuela?  Would we be threatening to take over the country of Greenland?  Would we still be in a war with Iran?

We will never know the answer to those questions. What we do know is there is a mid-term election coming up in November and it’s very important that registered voters vote only for the Democratic and/or Republican candidate of choice so their vote is not wasted.

The one question that does need to be answered is what are our schools teaching that almost 2% of the registered voters in this country that voted, voted for an individual that had absolutely no chance of winning in the 2024 election?

© 2026 Patricia L Johnson