By Eleni Himaras

Students for Nader founder Chris Budnick will cast his vote for the third party candidate on Election Day, even though he does not expect him to win.

In supporting the Reform Party candidate Ralph Nader, who will not appear on the ballot in Massachusetts, Budnick and the rest of the group hope to bring more people to the voting polls and promote competition among the major party candidates.

The 20-member group will co-sponsor a proxy debate on Nov. 1 with the Political Science Student Association, the College Democrats and the College Republicans, even though Students for Nader is not an official student group.

Budnick said he wants students to know that “voting for Nader is not a wasted vote.” Nader ran as a candidate for the Green Party in 2000 and received 3 percent of the vote.

“I hope he does keep running,” Budnick said. “We need a consumer advocate and an honest politician that is not controlled by corporations to keep parties on their toes.”

On Election Day, the Nader supporters will be posting and handing out flyers around campus, participating in voter awareness activities and helping with exit poll surveys, Budnick said.

After their day of work, Budnick said he might go to afterHOURS and watch some of the election coverage, but said his group has nothing formal planned.

“No matter who we lose to, the outcome is still going to be the same,” Budnick said. “I am just really interested to see how third-party candidates do.”

In Nader running mate Miguel Camejo’s speech on campus in September, he told the audience that a quarter of the votes for Nader in 2000 actually came from Repub-licans. Budnick backed this up when he said Nader actually took more votes away from Bush than Gore in New Hampshire in the last presidential election.

However, he said 70 percent of Nader supporters end up voting for one of the two main candidates on Election Day.

Budnick said he is not sure what the future plans for his group are, but said he was thinking about changing the structure of the organization to a voter awareness group where students of all political affiliations would join together to get students to go out and vote.