There was a minor outcry here in Maryland last week when our moderately Republican governor of this deeply blue state cast his vote for the corpse of Ronald Reagan. It took about 30 seconds for social media to start glowing with dozens of “Hogan threw away his vote” posts.

I’ve been hearing the outcry that voting for anyone except a Republican or a Democrat is throwing away your vote since before I was even registered. Here’s the thing, the idea that someone is throwing away their vote is utter bullshit. Let me tell you why.

You see, despite what people seem to want to tell me, my vote belongs to me. It’s not bought and owned property of whatever candidate has my usually preferred letter after their name… and it’s certainly not automatically destined for the other just because he seems less bad than the other major party option. We’ve puttered along far too long with parties that assume “well, they have to vote for one of us.” 

I went along with their line of reasoning for a long time myself, but this year is the end of that. I’ve absolutely finished casting my last vote for the “lesser.”  

I’ve voted this year for Jo Jorgensen because she’s the better option and speaks more to the issues I care about than either the Republican incumbent or the Democratic challenger. We don’t agree on every position… and I’m ok with that, because if your default setting is maximizing personal liberty, I don’t think you can go too far wrong in most cases.

There are plenty of people who will tell me I tossed my vote just like my governor did, but it’s the first vote for president I’ve cased in 12 years that I’m not almost embarrassed by. I like Jo and thing she’d be an admirable president… but in all honesty, the corpse of Ronald Reagan would still be a better president than either major party candidate, so even that’s a vote of conscience.