When You Can’t Vote For Jesus For President

I didn’t want to write about it again, but here I am. It’s not because I want to change your mind regarding how you choose to cast your vote. I’m writing this because I know there are people scratching their heads and saying, “How could she even consider letting the opposing political party have a chance to win this election?”

How could I say, without equivocation, I would never vote for a specific candidate even if it means the Others win?

What do you do when Jesus isn’t running for president?

I believe we should vote for principle over party politics.

There is a bill that was just proposed in MN. It suggests getting rid of party labels on ballots. Isn’t that fascinating? What if we actually took a look at the candidates and what they had done and said to see which one most closely aligned with our own political priorities? Why trust a D or an R behind someone’s name before their actual track record?

Why in the world do we overlook glaring character flaws just because they have the right letter next to their name?

And why would we consider those exact same character flaws a disqualification for office if they had the wrong letter next to their name?

Not voting for your party’s nominee is NOT the same as voting for another equally bad candidate (in the case of a two-party system).

Christianity Today has a fabulous article by Russell Moore about voting for the “lesser of two evils”. Here are a couple of quotes that say what I’m thinking so much better than I could:

“Candidates from outside the two major parties sometimes win. Abraham Lincoln ran as a Republican in an era when the major parties were the Whigs and Democrats. Even when third-party candidates don’t win the election, they can introduce issues and build a movement for the future.”

and

“When Christians face two clearly immoral options, we cannot rationalize a vote for immorality or injustice just because we deem the alternative to be worse. The Bible tells us we will be held accountable not only for the evil deeds we do but also when we “give approval to those who practice them” (Rom. 1:32).”

I’m praying Donald Trump doesn’t get the Republican nomination. If he does and I choose to not vote for him or the Democratic nominee, my vote is not wasted. My vote says what I will and will not tolerate. It also sets the tone for future elections. I honestly believe that if Donald Trump wins the presidential election, it’s the end of the Republican party as we know it. It turns it into something unrecognizable and unacceptable to me.

I have friends that would argue that we need to do everything we can to keep the Democratic front-runner out of office because they believe her to be a criminal and think it would be terrible for our country. I don’t want her in office either. However, I believe the current Republican front-runner is just as bad. If the choice is between a criminal and someone promising to commit war crimes, I choose neither.

I lived in MN in the fall of 1998 and watched a third party win the election. It can be done. In that case, it was won by a professional wrestler that everyone had dismissed as un-electable. Jesse Ventura won with just shy of 37% of the vote.

What about the argument that the president isn’t that powerful and you are really only voting for him/her because you need that party to have the power?

It’s true the executive branch doesn’t hold all the power, but it does have a lot of it. Bill Clinton issued 364 executive orders, George W. Bush issued 291 and Barack Obama has, so far, issued 226. The presidency is also the face of America to the rest of the world and has enormous influence when it comes to national security and military issues.

I’m not willing to roll the dice and hope the party overshadows the potential disastrous decisions of the president.

Why not make this election year, the year the silent majority was no longer silent? What if we showed up and voted our conscience? If we all rejected the “lesser of two evils” argument, there would be a seismic political shift that could make a positive change for generations to come.

Cartoon by Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle.