Election 2016, ADHD-style

You can usually count on people with ADHD to speak their minds. To be just a little bit outside the traditional box (or maybe a lot).  To not do what everyone else is doing just because everyone else is doing it.

This election season, I’ve heard a lot of people say they’re voting for Clinton because they hate Trump.  Or for Trump because they hate Clinton and the establishment she comes from.  When I point out that there is another option, third-party candidate Gary Johnson, they brush it off.  “He’ll just take votes away from <the candidate I hate>.  That’s what happened with Ross Perot in 1992.”  But if everyone says that every four years, we will be stuck forever with the same flawed two-party system, where we vote for the lesser of two evils.   This isn’t a horse race where it pays to bet on the person with the best odds.

I don’t want to get involved in anyone’s politics. Everyone has the right and the responsibility to vote for the candidate they believe will do the best job.  I guess that’s the point I want to make.  My wish for this country is that everyone finds the ADHD-like courage to let their voice be heard, to step outside the box, and do what makes sense to them.  Sadly, I think most people probably won’t.  They will continue to walk through the cattle chutes of their existence and do what everyone else is doing.  

But what about the ADHD community? I think we can do better because that’s how we’re wired. Can we leverage our ADHD-related strengths to do right by our country? To be bold? To jump right over that cattle chute?  To be the impetus for change? I want to be clear, if you really LIKE Clinton or Trump, by all means, that’s who you should vote for.  But if not, there is another choice. Gary Johnson will be on your ballot in November right next to the candidates more people loathe than like. 

Do your homework and vote what you believe.  Not what you’re told “makes sense”.  If enough of us do that, we can make a difference.

May the best candidate win.