With historically low approval ratings for both the Democratic and the Republican presidential candidates this election, many voters dissatisfied with both candidates have turned to protest voting as a way to express their malcontent with the current political system.

Protest voters deliberately vote for candidates with very low chances of winning, for ineligible candidates or for no one at all. In the U.S., the first category usually includes most third-party candidates.

Enough people protest voting can create a statistically significant result that could alert others to their estrangement from the political system or from the candidates more likely to win.

Reform and later Independence Party candidate James Janos, better known by his wrestling ring name Jesse “The Body” Ventura, became the governor of Minnesota in 1999 with a grassroots campaign with advertisements that urged viewers to not “vote for politics as usual.”

But since 1972, the first year that state primaries in the U.S. became widespread, no third-party presidential candidate has received more than one electoral vote.

Significant recent third-party candidates since then include Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, who won 2.74 percent in 2000, and Reform candidate Henry Ross Perot, who won 8.40 percent in 1996 and 18.91 percent running as an independent in 1992.

“Third parties have, while winning votes in some elections, have never really succeeded,” said Gary Jacobson, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at UC San Diego. “Donald Trump has shown why, and that is if you want to mount an insurgency, it’s easier to take over an existing party than it is to start one on your own.”

It is difficult to distinguish between abstention from voting as protest and abstention from voting due to apathy towards the election, but despite this seeming lack of impact, protest voting can change people’s mindsets towards voting both leading up to and after elections.

These votes can also tip the balance in swing states because fewer people vote for the “main” candidates, and protest voting will often draw support away from one candidate more than the other. In 2000, for instance, Democratic support was split between Nader and Democratic candidate Al Gore, resulting in Republican candidate George Bush’s win.

“[Protest voting] has certainly made an impact in this country,” history teacher Mark Janda said. “With Ross Perot and Ralph Nader, we’ve had some elections that were really impacted, either in the way it changed conversation or in actual outcomes. Some people would contend that George Bush was elected in 2000 by virtue of many people taking their votes over to Ralph Nader, and that obviously has had an impact on American history.”

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on November 16, 2016.