Libertarian Party presidential candidate Chase Oliver blasted the “ills” of the two-party system, arguing it denies Americans quality voting choices.
“I think voters are conditioned by fear to choose one or the other, or the lesser of two evils,” Oliver said on NewsNation's “The Hill” Thursday.
“But I travel around the country reminding voters that even if you choose the lesser of two evils, you're still choosing the evil,” he added. “And I hear people all the time if you know them … saying, 'Yeah, I'll vote for you, but you're not going to win.'
“But do you think they're evil?” NewsNation host Blake Berman asked in response.
Oliver, who is currently running in at least 34 states, criticized both the Republican and Democratic parties for contributing to the growing national debt and a hawkish foreign policy, problems he believes are not being solved by the current two-party system.
“I think a lot of what a two-party system leads to is an intrusive, overly meddling, abusive state that infringes on our freedoms from the top to the bottom, from the federal government to local governments,” he said Thursday.
“So we want to fight back against the government evils that we're not getting from Republicans and Democrats who continue to use our tax dollars to inflate the debt, the deficit and wars around the world,” Oliver continued. “There's a whole bunch of evils that aren't being addressed by the Republicans and Democrats because of the nature of our two-party system.”
Berman then asked whether the candidate, who had 2% support in Pennsylvania in a recent Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll, had a “potential to swing the election” in a key battleground state that President Biden won by less than 2% in 2020.
“Well, one of the goals of the Libertarian Party is to disrupt the two-party system,” Oliver said. “And whichever it is, we want to disrupt this election and give voters more choices on the ballot. And let's change the way we vote. If it's ranked choice voting, then you don't have what's called the spoiler effect. But to get that done, we need to deal a blow to the two-party system.”
The White House hopeful, who was named the party's nominee in late May, said he doesn't support backing either Trump or Vice President Harris because he believes neither would be a “great” president.
“I don't think either way we're going to have a great commander in chief,” Oliver said. “I don't think we're going to have a great leader. So it's two sides of a terrible coin. I'm not going to pick a side.”
The Hill is owned by Nexstar Media, which also owns NewsNation.
