Election 2012: 3rd Party Candidates Are Not Spoilers-Every Vote Must Be Earned

I just finished peeping an interesting article on 3rd Party candidates that appeared HERE in the UK Guardian. Some like to think a 3rd party candidate can spoil the election for Barack Obama… That’s totally stupid on a number of levels.. A vote with held from a 3rd Party candidate doesn’t automatically default to President Barack Obama..

I know lots of people still like to blame the 2000 election fiasco on Ralph Nader, but that’s just a weak excuse to cover up the fact that there were 250k eligible voters who never voted.. That means the out reach wasn’t there and rather than own up to shortcoming, it was easier to blame Nader who was a legitimate candidate who paid his dues as a long time political activist and consumer advocate.

Nowadays, when some one suggests that 3rd party candidate spoil elections, they really mean that a politically left leaning candidate would vote for Barack Obama if that 3rd Party candidate wasn’t on the ballot.. That’s simply not true.. First of all there are 25 candidates running for President and they span the political gauntlet. Someone please explain how someone attracted to the Libertarian or Constitution Party train of thought, which tend to be pretty conservative, are gonna hurt Barack Obama? If anything it might help Obama if in theory votes were being ‘diverted’ from Mitt Romney.

In fact this is what was said to be the reason Bill Clinton won his election in 1992 against George Bush Sr.. Ross Perot ran and supposedly split the conservative vote. Were folks on the left complaining about 3rd parties then? If I recall many Democrats welcomed Perot. Some even publicly thanked him. My point is this, why would someone who likes the platform of the Peace and Freedom or Green Party toss in their chips and get behind the platform of the Democrats when key issues are either not addressed or severely compromised?

The bottom line is every single vote, no matter what the party affiliation needs to be earned. No vote should be taken for granted.. Sadly, the Democrats and Republicans come to the table with considerable financial advantages. They’ve also done everything in their power to exclude 3rd party candidates from appearing on the ballots in many states by passing restrictive laws in many states preventing 3rd parties from getting on the ballot. The Democrats have been relentless in trying to block the Green Party from showing up on ballots. .

If that’s not enough, the two big parties have teamed formed an organization called the Commission on Presidential Debates, which ran roughshod over the League of Women Voters and took control over the debates. The end game was to keep the main debates between members of the Democrats and Republicans. A leaked contract between the two main political parties show that they negotiate what topics to talks about, format, moderator etc. You can read about that HERE. So before one goes crying about a 3rd Parties ask yourself, why are u cool with excluding people?

Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala
Green Party Candidates

As a result of all this exclusion Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein is suing the CPD. The suit was filed after Stein and Green Party candidate Cheri Honkala were arrested outside the second Presidential debate where they protested. Both women were shackled to chairs for over 8 hours.. The suit claims they were deprived of constitutional rights, due process, equal protection, and free speech, as well as her statutorily protected civil rights. This is ironic considering how both Romney and Obama have repeatedly talked about the importance of democratizing the world and making sure everyone has a fair shot. I guess that only applies if you go through one of the two parties.

It’s amazing some of the people who complain about 3rd parties are the same ones who haven’t done any phone banking or precinct walking-ever. It’s amazing they’ll complain about 3rd parties while ignoring the millions of people who are eligible to vote but still not registered. .Whats being done to win them over?

One should ask themselves how are there still millions of people unregistered after two years of presidential campaigning and BILLIONS of dollars spent in ads? Why get angry at someone who in spite of all the daily exposure went and politically educated themselves and decided they wanna vote Libertarian, Peace and Freedom or Green? Haven’t we demanded that people become more politically active??

If folks were smart they’d do like most countries..instead of having a winner take all system, they would have proportional representation..That means the percentage of people from particular parties sitting in congress or the senate reflects the percentage of votes received. Also folks should also keep in mind 3rd party candidates are running for every office not just president..but then again the average person voting for President is hard pressed to tell you about local races..Go figure..

Here’s an excerpt from the UK Guardian article which you can read by clicking the link below

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20019651

While Americans suffer a daily bombardment of opinion polls as election day looms, they are invariably asked to select from just two candidates – the rest are rarely included.

But Public Policy Polling (PPP) has surveyed the potential impact of the other candidates in key battleground states.

In Virginia, in a straight two-horse race, Obama is up three percentage points, says PPP’s Dustin Ingalls. But add the third-party candidates Johnson, Goode and Stein, who are all on the ballot there, and Obama’s lead increases to four percentage points.

Here is a recent debate between the 3rd parties moderated by Larry King

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoNPO4h2quk