Vote your conscience

I'm not sure what brought this on today, but sometimes I apologize to people for Barack Obama winning the presidency because I did not vote for John McCain. But I've been hearing a lot about the conservative vote being split and then the Democrat winning. So I decided to do a little research today.

And guess what? It's not my fault Barack Obama won. Three states, Indiana, Missouri and North Carolina were super close but even if all three had broke for McCain, Obama still would have had 339 electoral votes to McCain's 199.

Ten states had two or greater per cent of ballots cast for third party candidates. John McCain still won eight of those states and in the other two, if all the third party votes had been cast for McCain instead, Barack Obama would have still won. Never mind that there were multiple left wing and right wing candidates from a variety of political parties and the right wing candidates got less than 2000 votes more than the left wing candidates. Just under 200,000 people cast third party votes (and 6251 in Nevada voted "none of the above") in an election where over 131 million votes were cast. Obama got just under 10 million more votes than McCain.

So if it's not my fault Obama won, whose fault is it anyway? I'm going to place the blame squarely on the Republican party. After all, they nominated a moderate instead of a conservative.

Anymore, in my opinion, there's not enough difference between the two parties to say that there is a choice. Seems like the Republicans are the same as the Democrats except they are against abortion.

One more myth to clear up...Ross Perot is the reason Bill Clinton was elected. On the surface, you could say that except...Ross Perot wasn't exactly conservative. Sure he was anti-NAFTA (anyone still remember what that is?) but he was pro-choice, pro-gay rights, anti 4th amendment, pro-Department of Education, and pro-Federal Reserve. He was for bigger government and higher taxes. He did want to cut spending and balance the budget, that's conservative. He wanted to test our children more and increase the length of the school year. He even wanted to take "at-risk" kids out of the home at birth to be raised by the state.

Maybe the reason people voted for Perot is that we Americans have a bit of a stubborn streak. Maybe Perot got his message out in such a way that it resonated with people but they didn't dig in to see his substance. Maybe it was a big ol middle finger to the Establishment.

Maybe Bush and Clinton were, deep down, a lot alike and it finally felt like there was a choice.

On November 6, you have a choice. People will tell you a third party candidate "can't win." But if you cast your vote for someone you actually believe in and not just against someone you dislike, you can't lose.