By Tom Calarco

I’m voting for Jill Stein. Why, you might ask. Aren’t you wasting your vote? Well, when you can’t decide which will be worse, Hillary or the Donald—what other choice is there? Though Stein doesn’t have the experience to be President, at least her politics is close to mine and she is neither a criminal and liar like Hillary or a misogynistic bigot like Trump.

My vote is a protest vote, like another Loveland friend who says he’s going to write-in “Goofy.” That’s quite appropriate for this joke of a Presidential campaign. When it started I was with Bernie Sanders all the way, and I still am with Bernie. What is puzzling, and has been ever since he endorsed Hillary, is why he endorsed her before the convention when he had vowed not to give up until all the votes at the convention had been counted.

I think the answer is obvious: once he realized how rigged the system was against him and that it would be in his best interests going forward as a U.S. Senator to support Clinton, he relented. In fact, if the Democrats take back the Senate, he is in line to be Chairman of the powerful Senate Budget Committee. While it was a pragmatic move, it angered many of his idealistic supporters like me. But it is understandable.

The overwhelming majority of the party leaders (superdelegates) had endorsed Hillary before the primaries had even begun – more than 400 endorsements. At that juncture, Bernie had something like four super delegates supporting him. In the early going, he was ignored by Mainstream Media (MSM), and even when he started to make the race close, MSM dismissed his candidacy as having little chance. They “trumped” up the word socialist; they ridiculed his plans for education and healthcare; they ignored his plan to break up the big banks. Later, the revelations provided by Wikileaks showed that MSM had colluded with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to rig the nomination for Hillary.

But little has been made of this and as a result few people know about it. Why? The answer is obvious. MSM has been and continues to rig the election in favor of Hillary.

It went far beyond this, however. In some instances voter party registrations were fraudulently altered to prevent them from voting in areas where support for Bernie was strong; polling places in areas with strong Bernie support were not opened; and votes in Bernie strongholds were even thrown out or not counted. But worst of all the voting machines were hacked in many states, that is altered, so that votes were taken away from Bernie and given to Clinton. I explain this in greater detail with facts and figures for those who are interested in my article, Where Have You Gone, Bernie Sanders, on the Internet Blog, Medium.

It was why I went to march in protest in Philadelphia with 10,000 other Bernie supporters. Unfortunately, it seems our enthusiasm has been drained. We have been suppressed at every turn. They blunted us and the Bernie delegates in Philadelphia, and made it seem like a “Happy Hillary Party” at the convention with Obama, Biden, Bill, and Michelle leading the cheer, these dishonest leaders who only care for their own glorification and the crowning of one of their colleagues in corruption.

Trump is right. This election is rigged. And sometimes I even think Trump is a party to this, just playing along. He loves the attention and just think how much his “brand” will benefit from these shenanigans.

What can we do about it, you might ask? We can’t change it, can we? If a U.S. Senator with millions of supporters can’t do it, how do you expect me and you, and our neighbors to combat these corrupt forces that rule over us?

Well, I for one, won’t vote for Hillary, for a nominee who won by cheating and dishonesty, one who would do anything to become President. There have been even allusions by none other than Julian Assange himself that DNC voter expansion director and Bernie supporter, Seth Rich, was the informant who leaked the DNC files that showed the corrupt process. And you know what happened to him, or maybe you don’t. He was murdered on July 10 and police have been unable to determine a motive. When do you think Bernie endorsed Hillary? On July 12. A coincidence? Perhaps.

I, for one, disseminated information I had gathered about the election fraud to members of the Clermont County Democratic Party in emails, and what do you think happened to me? I was asked to resign from my position as the precinct captain in Loveland for failing to support Hillary. Don’t they see that they are part of the problem? If you have corrupt people at the top, you don’t support then, you fight to replace them, and this has got to start at the local level.

Would you believe that it has been decades since a representative from the Democratic Party of Clermont County has served in either the state house or state senate seats? Local party members attribute this to lack of financial support from the state party, whose marching orders come from the DNC. Then why are they going along with leaders who don’t support them?

We have a corrupt political system in America today but we need to realize we are part of the problem because of our apathy and our acceptance of what we hear on MSM, and because those of us who do care, feel powerless.

What we need to do is rally our forces because we still have the semblance of democracy in America and we have far greater numbers. We need to create our own media that serves truth and not corporate power – 99 percent of the media is owned by six huge conglomerates. We need to find candidates who are honest and will not support leaders blindly just because they represent the same party. We need more political parties, especially a people’s party. We need to talk about politics every day and realize it is not an impolite subject but one in which we can learn from each other in a give and take of ideas. Otherwise, we will continue to have elections and candidates who don’t represent us and who have been shoved down our throats like Clinton and Trump.

Tom Calarco is a resident of Downtown Loveland