A Presidential election year…

…and the New York Times' quadrennial whingeing about third-party candidates has begun.

From Gail Collins, "Running for President Is Not a Hobby," 1/31/24:

The third-party threat is always worrisome when it comes to messing things up, especially when elections are close. We’re still haunted by the saga of 2000, when Al Gore was pitted against George W. Bush. Ralph Nader made one of those principled third-party runs. Remember? Everything came down to Florida, which Bush won by 537 votes while Nader got nearly 100,000 — most of which would undoubtedly have gone to Gore otherwise.

One suspects, grumpily, if Tucker Carlson should run as a third party candidate this year the Times would change it's tune.  But never mind. Either way it wasn't, isn't, and won't be true.

According to USAFacts.org, here, in the last Presidential election, in 2020, only 66.8% of Americans eligible by age to vote did. Thirty-two percent did not. Vote. At all.

And the turnout in 2020 was the highest in a Presidential election since 1992. And that was the year Bill Clinton beat George H. W. Bush and a strong third party candidate, Ross Perot.

Which is to say there are plenty of people who could vote for a third party candidate without taking a single vote from either of the uninspiring choices already on the board. 

And that would at least be a start.