The next time someone tells me I’m “throwing my vote away” for not supporting a major candidate I’m going to dump a big bowl of fruit salad on his or her head.

The logic is always the same: by voting for [LITTLE KNOWN CANDIDATE AND/OR PARTY WITH COOL VIEWS] (let’s call it orange juice) you divert votes away from [BIG FAMOUS CANDIDATE AND/OR PARTY THAT CLAIMS TO HAVE SIMILAR VIEWS BUT IS ACTUALLY A HUGE BIG CORPORATE PUPPET] (let’s call it Pepsi).  And by doing so, you allow [BIG EVIL CANDIDATE AND/OR PARTY] (let’s call it Coke) to win the election.

- Well, wouldn’t you rather have Pepsi than Coke?  I mean, Pepsi isn’t much.  But at least it’s not Coke.

- No.  I’d rather have orange juice.

- But you can’t have orange juice.  You’ll never have orange juice.  The country isn’t ready for orange juice.  Most of the country hasn’t even heard of orange juice.  It’s either Coke or Pepsi.

- I don’t care.  I’m going to vote for orange juice because I want it.  I wouldn’t be true to myself if I didn’t vote for what I wanted.  Whether I get it is irrelevant.

- But if you don’t vote for Pepsi, you’ll allow Coke to take over the world.

- Yeah?  Good.  Because if orange juice doesn’t win, that means we get the world we deserve.  So let Coke take over.  Or Pepsi.  I don’t give a damn.  Because, as Berkeley Breathed memorably put it, both of them taste like malted battery acid.

Let me be clear about this.  Voting for a little-known candidate is not futile.  The following things, in contrast, are futile:

Watching Seabiscuit and hoping the horse just dies so you can go do something else with the day.

Waiting to be discovered by a model talent agency.

Teaching a cat to play gin rummy.

Pouring milk into your cereal then running to take a phone call and running back to the kitchen in a vain hope that the cereal hasn’t gone soggy.

Waiting for the Talking Heads to reform.

Getting in an ATM line behind someone who has ever actually used one before.

These things are futile.  Voting for an obscure candidate is, in contrast, a powerful expression of personal belief and determination.

Now I don’t want to hear any more wisecracks about my voting for Mary Cook in the California governor recall.