Third party votes
The WaPo has posted numbers of votes for all candidates. The third party break out is interesting:
Ralph Nader (I) 394,578
Michael Badnarik (Lib.) 377,940
Michael A. Peroutka (CST) 129,842
David Cobb (Green) 105,525
Badnarik was within about 16,500 votes of Nader. Badnarik, of course, was on more ballots than Nader. And Badnarik got more votes than the Greens and the Constitution Party combined.
The Libertarian party (which has different numbers than the WaPo) points out that Badnarik drew more votes than Browne in 2000. Not bad for a looneytarian. You Libertarians would do better if you nominated someone that is less crazy. After all, no one wants to hear your plan for dismantling the Department of Education.
And, interestingly, the Prohibition Party (yes, that prohibition) got 122 votes nationwide. That’s a lot.
November 4th, 2004 at 11:35 am
“Department of Education”
well i don’t mind if they do it, but please don’t tell everyone about it.
November 4th, 2004 at 11:39 am
So was Reagan a loonytarian? His platform called for the dismantling of the Department of Education.
November 4th, 2004 at 12:42 pm
I voted Libertarian in ’96 as a protest vote. I think a lot of folks do that.
I really thought Badnarik would outpoll Nader.
November 4th, 2004 at 1:08 pm
The thing is that Browne was less of an open loony than Badnarik, but it turned out that he was crooked. Badnarik got nominated out of party jockying between the two front runners (he was a distant #3), which sounds a lot like Kerry.
There are two problems with the LP right now, both of which drove me out of the party. One, the national committee is irrationally pacifist. I can agree with an isolationist (as in, no forward basing) defense plan, but I can’t deal with a “get attacked and navel-gaze about the root causes as you surrender” defense plan.
The other problem is that the party is full of uncomprimising nuts. Every party is full of nuts; the problem in the LP is that the nuts are more concerned about being as nutty as possible rather than winning as many elections as possible. The inmates are actually running the asylum in the LP.