During the upcoming presidential election you will have the opportunity to shake up our broken political system — not by ignoring its realities and casting a protest vote for a candidate who cannot win, but by helping to choose the ultimate victor.
Oregon’s students live in a swing state and will have the opportunity to vote in an unusually close election. On your campus alone, the votes cast by students — or the votes students fail to cast — could tip the balance.
As members of the Green Party, we recognize that John Kerry and the Democratic Party have tremendous failings. Former consumer advocate Ralph Nader sheds light on them and plays a crucial role as a corporate watchdog.
But the best way to forward the causes he has championed is not to vote in support of his candidacy.
Despite John Kerry’s serious failings, it is imperative
that he win because his presidency would be far superior to four more years under the right-wing Bush administration. Bush must lose and be prevented from doing further harm to our environment, labor rights, civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights. That will happen only if Kerry wins — meaning swing state progressives need to vote for Kerry.
Ideological idealism drives successful movements, but
idealism that ignores practicality cannot forward ideals and can even be counterproductive in the struggle to realize them. Recognizing this, we’ve formed the www.GreensforImpact.com committee and ask progressive students in swing states to support Kerry.
We must vote in a manner that accounts for political realities. We live under a political system that is rigged against third parties. We absolutely must change that, but it is a reality of the current mechanisms that swing-state votes for a third-party candidate will not aid in defeating the Bush administration and could help yield four more years of tax cuts for the wealthy that starve state governments and force local tuition increases.
This election is not a theoretical or academic exercise — real people’s lives are at stake. We cannot afford to treat our votes as acts of mere symbolic, individual expression.

David Segal is minority leader of the Providence, R.I., City Council. Austin King is an Alder in Madison, Wis.