This presidential election is a joke. We at the Courier are tired and fed up with the spewing nonsense and frustrations that have been occurring since the Democratic and Republican candidates were announced. Frankly, many of us are unsure of who to vote for, and if it’s even worth it to vote, so we challenged ourselves to stretch past the two party systems and really think about all of our options.

Third party candidates have never been a successful way of directly electing someone. However, they have been used historically to boost the success of one of the two party candidates. According to “This Nation,” an educational site on politics, “When third parties have emerged in American political history, their successes have been short-lived. In most cases, the issues or ideas championed by third parties have been “stolen” by the candidates of one of the two major parties. Sometimes the issue position taken by the third party is even incorporated into the platform of one of the existing parties. By doing so, the existing party generally wins the support of the voters that had been the support base of the third party. With no unique issues to stand on and depleted voter support, third parties generally fade away.”

So why are they still around? Well, third party candidates are often more inclined to take extreme stances on policies and ideas. While the two major party candidates are attempting to remain centered and approachable by the masses, third party-ers throw caution to the wind and really preach about what they believe in. While this can enable a whole lot of crazy, some good has come out of this cluster of people over the years.

We have accepted that we will never find a candidate who perfectly aligns with our beliefs. There will never be a perfect president. As people, we are all different. Furthermore, it’s impossible to make everyone happy.

That being said, we at the Courier have found some people who stand out to us as third party candidates.

The first of these people is the Green Party’s own Jill Stein. She remains very liberal in most of her policies, and at face value reminds us at the Courier as a bit of a Bernie Sanders gone rogue. She speaks of equality and environmental sustainability, which we can get behind. Her self-proclaimed Power to the People Plan claims it “creates deep system change, moving from the greed and exploitation of corporate capitalism to a human-centered economy that puts people, planet and peace over profit.”

Some key points in her plan include utilising the green energy movement to create more jobs, create a single-payer health insurance program for the country, “protect mother earth” through leading a global treaty to end climate change, and to create a truly represented democracy within elections which would include, “public campaign financing, ranked-choice voting, proportional representation, and open debates.”

While our crunchy granola queen may seem like a great bet, there is a dark horse emerging in the third party scene. His name is Zoltan Istvan and he is the founder and candidate for the Transhumanist party.

While his website may look a bit like the blog of a 12-year-old BMX enthusiast, Istvan himself is quite an impressive man. He is a successful author, with his popularly known philosophical science fiction novel, “The Transhumanist Wager.” He is also a blogger for Huffington Post, and many of his pieces revolve around the topics of futurist and transhumanist topics.

According to the platform policies listed on his website, if elected, Istvan plans on spreading a “proscience culture by emphasizing reason and secular values.” He wants to end the drug war by legalizing all drugs, and limit lobbyist’s power in order to truly include third party candidates in the election.

While it may be irrational to think that either of these candidates have an actual shot at winning the presidency, it’s clear that Istvan and the Courier are on the same page about one thing: he could be a useful pawn in this election.

According to USA Today, “Istvan estimates that he has between 250,000 and 1 million supporters ready to back whichever campaign might promise him a role in their administration, believing that he might be able to deliver between 30,000 and 50,000 votes in Florida, a potential swing state.”

Unlike Stein, Istvan is playing the screwed up election game to his advantage, making him the “if we had to pick third party” choice of the Courier. While Stein may have her priorities in order, especially when it comes to saving the planet, she doesn’t have a useful approach to this election. Unfortunately, we live in a country where good doesn’t always win naturally, and sometimes in order to do good you have to play into the evil system.