Let me be clear. I do not support either major candidate for the presidency. I have disliked McCain and his politics for as long as I can remember. I have disliked Obama and his politics for not quite as long. Nevertheless, I cannot cast my vote for someone who is campaiging on a promise to pass legislation that will surely increase the number of abortions in this country. I am not a one issue voter, but Obama’s absolutely uncompromising stance on abortion including voting against protecting babies born alive, and partial birth abortions, etc. totally disqualifies him for dog catcher much less POTUS.

But I digess. Back to voting third party. Unless a third party candidate is on the ballot in enough states to win an electoral majority and ideally in all 50 states (and yes, I know how hard that is to accopmlish for a third party candidate) they are simply not only not going to win. Furthermore, they are not prepared to govern if they do win.

The Constitution Party candidate (the one I have heard most often as the favored third party choice…although, he is not my particular temptation in the third party realm), Chuck Baldwin, is currently on the ballot (not as a write-in) in states constituting 318 electoral votes. That leaves 220 electoral votes that he absolutely cannot get. You need 270 to win.

So to be clear here, all Obama and McCain have to do TOGETHER is get 48 electoral votes in the states where Baldwin is on the ballot and he cannot win. Can’t. You think that Obama isn’t going to take 55 electoral votes in California? Or that Texas (34 electoral votes) isn’t going to McCain? That’s the reality.

And let’s just suspend reality for a minute and ask, “How is a third party candidate, that doesn’t even have the depth of support to get on the ballot in all 50 states going to govern in the event he actually got elected?” The whole idea of accumulating and spending “political capital” is a very real one and a third party candidate wouldn’t have ANY to start with.

I think that third party candidates for President help foster the notion that the most important vote we make is the one for President and that the only way we have to influence politics is with our vote. Meadow muffins. We’ve got a lot of options available to us. We can build a new party by doing the hard work necessary to get local people on the ballot and building from there, NOT by starting at the top and working down. We can have fund-raisers and talk to our neighbors for the the entire 4 years between presidential elections so that there is a base to build from. We can support the special interests that we care the most about with our hard earned money. We can write those people we do elect and send letters to the editor and hold our elected officials accountable ALL of the time and not just the 6 months before a presidential election.

It’s not our presidential vote that we “throw away.” It’s all the time between elections that is thrown away when we could have been working and investing some of our OWN political capital so that we aren’t faced with a choice of the lesser of two evils. If we are faced with a choice of the lesser of two evils, I don’t think that voting thrid party is the way to assuage our conscience. It’s how we use our time and money between elections that will truly fix our conscience.