Balanced Rebellion, a new viral campaign from Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson aims to pull votes from both Democrats and Republicans. It’s punchy, with a sassy Abe Lincoln impersonator delivering a witty monologue into the camera. This was made for the digital age.
Gary Johnson’s camp knows that young people are the most disillusioned by the two major parties. The Libertarians see an opportunity to win us over. That’s where Balanced Rebellion comes in.
Balanced Rebellion is an online tool that allows users to submit their zip codes and their political leanings. Let’s say you live in zip code 00001, and you usually vote Republican but aren’t at all excited to cast a ballot for Trump. Perhaps you think he’s the lesser of two evils. Maybe you’re only voting for Trump as a means of stopping Hillary. Tell Balanced Rebellion that you are a would-be Republican voter who dislikes Trump, and they’ll match you up with someone else in your voting district who has the inverse of your views — in this case, a Democrat who would reluctantly vote for Hillary to stop Trump, but doesn’t really want to support her. The two of you both pledge your votes to Gary Johnson.
This eliminates two votes that would effectively cancel each other out, and instead pulls one vote each from Trump and Clinton and gives them instead to Johnson.
Johnson’s backers seek to capitalize on the least popular major party nominees in the past 50 years by winning the votes of Anti-Hillary Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans
The video takes aim at the one hesitation that people have about voting for a third-party candidate: that they’re “throwing away their vote.” If you’re matched with another voter through the online system, your hypothetical Trump vote won’t get cancelled out by your partner’s hypothetical Hillary vote. Instead, your votes get to have a real impact – an impact in favor of Gary Johnson.
Millennials want to make a difference – our engagement in social issues dwarfs that of any other generation alive today. Yet our voter participation rate has been weak in past election cycles. If Gary Johnson can pitch himself as the candidate that allows us to be heard, he could bring more young voters to the polls as he draws them away from the major parties.
