Only 23% of the popular vote could theoretically determine the presidential election. That scares me. We have a system shaped by the political realities, not of the 21st century, not of the 20th century, but of the 18th and 19th century. The electoral system was designed to placate slave owners’ interests. It is a system that desperately needs overhauling. But that, unfortunately, may never happen in my lifetime, given that we have a Congress that can barely function much less pass an amendment that would make all votes equally impactful in electing our highest executive. That is why this election will decide if we have a democracy for the next four years or very possibly never if the self-proclaimed wannabe dictator gets elected. One way to equivocate is to vote for a third party. After the 2016 election I discovered that a person I greatly respected had voted for Jill Stein. Why? He said he didn't like Clinton and certainly didn’t like Trump. Given the peculiarities of our electoral college, voting for a third party has no impact. My strategy has always been: I vote for the lesser of two evils in a two party system. Here is my acid tests for the 2024 presidential election: I am going to vote for the person that has performed for decades as a public servant and has not acted like a dictator or even intimated that they want to be a dictator — even for a day. Isn’t this why America parted ways with Great Britain, to avoid a dictatorship? Isn’t that why Americans wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Don’t people flock to our country from all over the world to flee dictatorships?