One of the problems with "expressing your independence" by voting for a third party candidate was quite well expressed in a series of articles that I believe appeared in Scientific American ca 1980. The articles reported a number of computer similations of voting patterns and options - back when that was a new thing.

With a more or less two party system, it is necessary for both of the major parties to be close to "middle of the road" on most issues in order to have any chance of being elected.

In the abscence of a third choice, people would select from one or the other of the two.

Those who choose to vote for a third party candidate will nearly all come from the major party most like the third party, thus assuring that the "other major party" - i.e. the one least acceptable to the those who vote third party is going to win.

Better to vote for the best (or least bad) candidate who has a chance to win than to take your vote for him/her (away from the "lesser of the evils") and allow the "worst of the evils" to have it.

A vote for a third party candidate is effectively a vote for the candidate you like least.

In places where there actually are more than two choices with a realistic chance of winning the situation is very much different, but in the US "winner take all" system, voting for someone who can't win is just taking the vote from one you might accept and in effect giving your vote to the worst.

In the last US presidential election, there is some evidence that (at least) one of the major parties actively solicited and encouraged "reluctant" third party candidates whom they expected would take votes from their major party real opponents, as a method of assuring their own win in specific areas. It appears to be a very well known and frequently used (surreptitious) method in local and regional elections. A common method is for a strong candidate, usually an incumbent, who is facing a real challenge to find an "unknown benefactor" to suddenly give support to a marginal third candidate, and then campaign that "#3 is just like #2 only better," thereby splitting the votes that #2 might have gotten.

John