A Libertarian polling in single digits usually doesn’t get a headline. Ted Brown is getting one because the Texas Senate race is that tight. Democrat James Talarico leads Republican Ken Paxton 48% to 46% in a University of Houston Hobby School poll, and Brown is sitting at 3%. Pollster Mark Jones says that sliver could decide the whole thing, largely by drawing moderate and disaffected Republicans who won’t vote for Paxton but still want to show up at the polls.

Brown has done this before. His 2024 Senate run pulled more than 267,000 votes, a record for a Texas Libertarian, and he argues that a vote for a candidate you don’t believe in is the real wasted vote. His platform is true Libertarian territory: cut spending, repeal the income tax, abolish the IRS and ICE, rescind Trump’s tariffs and exit the Iran War. It’s a long list, and plenty of Texas voters will disagree with parts of it.

Closer to home, the question is whether the same Ellis County voters who’ve been grumbling about both parties for years will actually pull the lever for a third name. In a race where two points separate the front-runners, a few thousand votes out of the local precincts aren’t a rounding error anymore.

Where do you land on this one: does a third-party vote send a message, or does it just help the candidate you like least? Sound off below.