Some of us are perfectly happy with the two big-party presidential choices on the ballot, but many of us feel that, once again, we’re left choosing between the lesser of two evils.
As we consider how to vote, we face a stark reality. Washington state’s electoral college votes will, without a doubt, go to the Democrats. Four years ago our state gave 520,000 more votes to Hillary Clinton than to Donald Trump. This year’s tally will probably be at least as lopsided, if not more. Whichever presidential candidate wins by even one vote will get every one of our state’s 12 electoral votes.
If we lived in one of the few battleground states, like Pennsylvania or Florida, our votes would be worth their weight in gold. In Washington, however, the reality is that we cannot change our state’s electoral votes.
While that might be disheartening, it comes with a big upside: we have freedom to safely go beyond the big two parties without worrying about “wasting” our vote.
And so we might flip through the third-party options in the voter guide, glancing at the Libertarians, Greens and Socialist Workers Party, but still not finding a good option.
This year there is a new third party that might be of interest, especially to Christians, other people of faith, and all who want to follow their moral convictions.
It’s called the American Solidarity Party, and it’s something of a breath of fresh air for those who want to vote their conscience.
The party is pro-life to the core, beginning with opposition to abortion and euthanasia, but it dives deeper into the biblical principles of caring for the “least of these.”
Its “whole life” agenda affirms that life begins at conception, but expands that to say societal care for the unborn shouldn’t stop at birth. It pushes to support the poor, to push for peace, to fight for dignity for all.
The party was founded in 2011 as an American version of the Christian Democratic parties common in Europe.
Its slogan is “Common good, common ground, common sense.”
This week I talked by phone with the American Solidarity Party’s 2020 presidential candidate, Brian Carroll. He said that as a pro-life evangelical Christian, he voted Republican for many years, but became less secure with the party over the past decade. He began to suspect that Republican leaders were playing the pro-life movement for votes, throwing them tidbits but failing to push for a “personhood” constitutional amendment that would truly protect the unborn.
He learned about the American Solidarity Party and was delighted with its detailed platform. In 2018 he unsuccessfully ran under the party’s banner for Congress against Republican California Rep. Devin Nunes. Last year he won the party’s nomination to run for president.
“Our party is pro-life for the entire life,” Carroll told me. “That’s where I am. We are opposed to abortion, but we are also opposed to assisted suicide and capital punishment.”
They support strong families and strong communities, which means supporting workers and small, local businesses.
Economically, they push against resources accumulating in the hands of the few, and support helping more people on the lower end of the socio-economic ladder have access to owning property and businesses.
“We are capitalism on steroids,” he said. “The
government needs to tilt the playing field back in the direction of the little guy.”
In keeping with its whole-life ethic, the party has a strong environmental focus, including addressing climate change. Without it, he said, massively destructive major weather events and long-term drought issues will lead to huge waves of migration and warfare.
“People showing up at our southern border in Mexico are motivated by climate issues,” Carroll said. “That’s a life issue.”
The full party platform is online at www.solidarity-party.org.
Carroll, who wears a Dr. C. Everett Koop-style beard, is a father of five and a grandfather of 14. He recently retired after a four-decade career as a teacher, including public middle schools in California and a private missionary school in Colombia, teaching the children of Bible translators.
What does he say to those who say a third-party vote is wasted?
In short, he said, this is a way to be noticed by the big parties.
Pro-life Democrats can influence their party, which has abandoned them on the abortion issue, he said. The same goes for Republicans who are uncomfortable with families being separated at the border and children being kept in cages.
“That is so unchristian that a lot of Republicans are saying, ‘we have lost our direction. We need to start over again.’”
I asked Carroll why they aren’t listed on the ballot in Washington. He said that despite the pandemic lockdown, the party’s activists in Washington were able to get almost half of the 1,000 signatures needed to land a spot on the ballot. The national party hired professional signature gatherers to help get them the rest of the way. Unfortunately, those signature gatherers were doing the same thing on behalf of other parties, so when the signatures were turned in, there were so many duplicates that the party didn’t make the threshold. He said they’ve learned and anticipate being on the ballot in 2024, or earlier if candidates run for local offices under the party’s banner.
For this year at least, that means to vote for the American Solidarity Party requires a write-in for Brian Carroll and his vice presidential nominee, Amar Patel.
To learn more, the Washington state party can be reached at aspofwa@gmail.com. They maintain a Facebook group at www.facebook.com/groups/WashingtonASP.
“A third party wins if either party steals their platform,” Carroll said. “Our goal is not necessarily to occupy the White House, but is to lead to positive changes in our country. If either party steals any part of our platform, we’ve won.”
Whichever way you vote, I hope you take the opportunity to learn about the creative diversity of America’s political free-thinkers. The future of one or both of the big two parties might just be germinating in committed dreamers like those in the American Solidarity Party.
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Brian Mittge enjoyed feeling a little hopeful about 2020 politics for once. Drop him a line at brianmittge@hotmail.com.
