What Green Party and third-party voters in Pa. might tell us about the future of close elections
Frustrated about Gaza, thousands of voters in Pennsylvania turned from the Democrats to a third party or didn't vote at all.
That sense of dread many Democratic voters felt the day after the election, when Donald Trump’s second term was confirmed, is not at all unfamiliar to Lucy Duncan.
“That feeling you are experiencing right now, that feeling of the world being turned upside down? The feeling that you and loved ones are facing imminent threats, that the walls are closing in? Feel that,” said Lucy Duncan, 60, who lives in West Philadelphia.
That feeling is part of a message Duncan hoped to send to Washington. She swapped votes with a friend in Massachusetts, who cast a ballot for her for the Party for Socialism and Liberation — a choice she made out of frustration with the Biden-Harris administration’s continued arming of Israel in its war in Gaza.
In the waning days of the chaotic 2024 election season, I spoke with Duncan and a half dozen other Philadelphians who voted for third-party candidates for president or chose not to vote for the top of the ticket at all. While Trump’s wide margin of victory over Vice President Kamala Harris meant that those ballots could not have affected the outcome of the presidential race in Pennsylvania, third-party votes could have made a difference in the race for U.S. Senate between Republican Dave McCormick and Democratic Sen. Bob Casey.
Though the race was called for McCormick, a recount was slated to begin Wednesday, with Casey trailing McCormick by fewer than 18,000 votes. Leila Hazou, the Green Party candidate for Senate, received more than 66,000 votes.
As the nation prepares for a second Trump presidency, I spoke with third-party voters about the election’s outcome as another way to figure out what went wrong for Democrats in this election cycle.
You can’t girlboss your way out of genocide being wrong.
Ora Lin was convinced that Trump would win and said that’s not the worst outcome, as it will lead to more organizing at the grassroots level. Lin is 20 years old, nonbinary, uses they/them pronouns, and works as an indie sewing pattern designer. Before they moved to Philly, Lin volunteered for Thu Nguyen’s campaign for Worcester City Council, helping elect Nguyen as the first openly nonbinary person to office in Massachusetts. This was their first time voting in a presidential election.
Lin volunteered for Jill Stein’s campaign because of the Green Party’s stance against genocide, the billions that the U.S. has sent in military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza started last year, and Harris’ complicated record on trans rights. “It is entirely the fault of Harris and her administration and the party for not earning people’s votes,” they said.
“I don’t want to play the ‘lesser of two evils’ game for the next 20, 30 years,” Lin said. “I’m really tired of the shaming. You can’t girlboss your way out of genocide being wrong.”
Lin is part of a growing number of Philadelphians who, disaffected by the war in Gaza, have turned to the Green Party. Party officials told me that there were about 2,000 registered Green Party members in Philadelphia until this election cycle. Since the war in Gaza, that number has increased by half.
Voters like Lin are mourning the more than 43,000 Palestinians who have already died, most of them civilians. They see the $17.9 billion in military aid that the U.S. has sent to Israel in the last year as unconscionable.
Belinda Davis, 65, is chair of the Green Party of Philadelphia and has voted Green since 2001. “Every year we become significantly more diverse, one critical part of our strength,” Davis said. The party had hoped to achieve minor party status in the state on Election Day — which it would have gained if 2% of Pennsylvania voters chose a Green candidate, and would have guaranteed ballot access for special elections in the state without having to gather signatures. The last special election on Sept. 17 was uncontested and only 8% of voters participated. When Philly Greens last ran in one in 2017, they got more votes than the only candidate on the ballot with a write-in candidate, but lost to another write-in candidate.
The Greens were unsuccessful this year, but hold out hope for the future. (The Libertarian Party was able to meet the minor party benchmark.)
Imrul Mazid, 44, is a West Philly resident who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and has chosen third-party candidates ever since. Mazid pointed to data that an overwhelming majority of Americans want a cease-fire. “That’s not a radical position at all,” he said, “If Kamala were to only speak to her electorate who overwhelmingly want a cease-fire, that would result in more votes for her.”
Mazid immigrated to the U.S. from Canada and believes that “at the core of democracy is choice in candidates. Two choices — a choice between Pepsi and Coke — isn’t really much of a choice,” he said. “The two are rabid hawks,” he added. “It’s hard for me to comprehend how one could vote for genocide when those resources would be better spent here domestically.”
I don’t vote my fears. I vote for my hopes and my ideals and my aspirations and my dreams and my visions.
And then there are the Philadelphians who have wrestled with the impacts of U.S. foreign policy — the children who are dying in Palestine every day — and can’t bring themselves to vote at all.
Charmaine Seitz, 50, lives in Delaware County and has a deep personal connection to Gaza. Her husband is Palestinian, and she lived in the West Bank working as a journalist from the mid-1990s to 2013. She has voted for Democrats in every presidential election, including those when she lived overseas, but this year she didn’t fill out the top of her ballot.
Could you vote for someone who is actively killing your family and your friends?
Duncan is codirector of reparationWorks, a group committed to reparations for the harms of slavery and colonialism in Philadelphia. After “a lot of heart-searching and reflection,” she decided to swap her vote; a friend in Massachusetts voted on her behalf for socialist party candidates Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia, and Duncan voted for Harris in Pennsylvania. This way, her dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party registered, but she still did her part to help avoid a Trump presidency. Some websites, like SwapYourVote.org, matched over 15,000 voters in swing states with voters in “safe states” for this purpose.
Duncan visited Gaza twice for her previous work with the American Friends Service Committee, where she met Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian poet who was killed in an Israeli air strike last year. One of her former coworkers has lost 30 family members.
“I feel like a part of my heart is in Gaza,” Duncan said.
She said she was at peace with her decisions, even though — because of Trump’s xenophobic and bigoted policies — the election’s outcome placed marginalized people at risk. ”Many people were vulnerable before the election,” Duncan said. “Certainly, Palestinians were among the most vulnerable. More are feeling under threat with Trump’s election. And, yes, it’s scary. But the reality is that nobody is really safe under capitalism, empire, and white supremacy. My hope is that our organizing for justice really accelerates and that we work to protect and transform our communities.”
It’s easy to say third-party voters “spoiled” the election for the Democrats, but the reality is much more complex. The level of frustration they felt with the Biden-Harris administration’s policies in Gaza was so intense that if they didn’t vote for third-party candidates, these Philadelphians would likely not have voted at all.