TexasCHLforum.com

kalipsocs wrote:Shoot me down for using wikipedia, but their numbers state Bush netted 62,040,610 votes and Kerry 59,028,444. Thats is a difference of 3,012,166 votes a narrow margin when you are talking about 121+ million votes. If you ask me, thats about as middle of the road as you get. Based on that phenomenon, I don't see how your argument for the electoral college makes much sense.

Use Wikipedia all you want - it is decent. The problem is that you are using the national numbers and those don't matter from the election standpoint. What you need to do is check for Texas only. Or any other state that is heavily one side or the other. Then take votes from those states and give them to a third party candidate who can then raise the awareness that you can't rely on all the votes going to just the 2 parties.

So take votes (both D and R) from NY and CA and give them to L and take votes from Texas and give them to L. NY and CA still go D in the electoral college and TX still goes R. No change in the outcome of the presidential race for this year, but in 2 more years maybe the R and D candidates will actually propose something to get back all of the L votes from this year. It isn't about getting L elected, it is about having a viable 3rd choice so the big 2 HAVE to go after their base as well instead of just the swing voters by promising crap to everyone.

I think you missed the point - because it is all about the electoral college, a vote for Barr in Texas is NOT a vote for Obama. It might play out that way in Ohio or Florida, but not in Texas where the electoral votes are all but locked up for the R candidate. This might also not be the case in smaller/local elections.

The point is that we have a horrible person running in the "R" camp, but if we keep voting for them because they are the "lesser of 2 evils", then the R party has no reason to change as they can count on our vote. But if it looks like they need to court us in order to assure our vote, then maybe we can actually get some true conservative / smaller government people back into the party and/or platform. A high Libertarian turnout says that much more loudly than not voting at all. Voting for McCain doesn't encourage the needed changes at all. Of course, having 3+ viable parties in most elections would be very nice.