Are you kidding?

You are correct of course about the electoral vote, but obviously the vote that did not go to which candidate has a chance to win that is still more favorable to the third-party voter than the Democrat does have an impact.

Count the votes on the top of this page. If the Johnson votes went to Romney instead, doesn't the result become clearer? It is much more likely that the third-party voter will lose the election for Romney than win it for Johnson - astronomically so.

So again - in 2012 - with the polls where they are - even plus or minus 10% for Obama or Romney - a vote for Johnson is equivalent to a vote for Obama.

That is the math of it, and all the motivation, justification, and hand-wringing before and after casting the vote is meaningless. The MATH is all that MATTERS as that is what drives the RESULT.

Unless the Supreme Court is going to hand another election to the candidate that got the fewest popular votes like they did in 2000, the electoral college is the only thing that matters, which means that only 8 states matter, and all 8 states right now are clearly for or leaning Obama.

It's a shame that states that are predictably red or blue don't get visits or advertising from the candidates. For example, Kentucky is a democratic-majority registered state. Our largest population centers are clearly democratic. But we have McConnell and Rand Paul. The only candidate advertising here is Tea Party and aggressive republican, hardly any democratic candidate.

I'm wishing it would go to popular vote, I think, and do away with electoral college. Make each candidate have to win every state, every vote they can. Have to think on it a little more.

Only if ID is required...

Perhaps that wouldn't be the case if Romney didn't kowtow so far to the fringe right, to the point of excluding the majority of Americans. One thing for certain, that ain't Gary Johnson's fault, or problem.

The Republicans are something else man.... You could run an empty sack of potatoes against Obama and would win this election considering what an abject failure his presidency has been in virtually every measurement.

But no...Gotta stick an overstuffed,overprivileged fundamentalist with a recipe for financial disaster in there to insure you alienate the majority of the voting population, then cry about how a third party candidate "stole" your election from you.

good grief.

ID is required, and has always been required, Joey.

Except in actual measurements: foreign policy, domestic policy, preventing a depression ;).

Rude, seriously, look at the conservative side: who else would have been a viable candidate this cycle?

I can't think of anyone other than Jeb I'd consider qualified for national office out of what remains of that party. Do you have any?

And Jeb was too smart to lose against Obama this cycle. He's sitting out the Tea Party wingnut faction.

Who is going to throw in 2016? Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush maybe ...

no, i'm not kidding. you might want to look up electoral votes, and the entire voting process for president.
presidents aren't elected by popular vote, or majority vote. each state has its own rules regarding electoral votes, and how they are obtained. in some states, whoever wins the popular vote wins the entire number of electoral votes. in others, they are apportioned. so, altho ross got almost 20% of the popular vote, his votes in each state weren't enough to garner a single electoral vote. he had, therefore, zero chance to win the presidency.

also, you're assuming that all votes for 3rd party candidates would go to romney if they didn't go to an alternative. what is that based on? they could just as easily go to obama.

at any rate, it doesn't matter one whit in how i decide to vote. i will vote my conscience, and it will not be for obama or romney. they don't deserve my vote.
as for your assumptions about where a 3rd party vote would wind up if one had to choose between romney and obama. i'd vote for the latter. but, i get to choose.

http://factcheck.org/2012/10/obamas-numbers/

Summary
For more than a year, we’ve been pointing out on a regular basis how President Obama, his allies and his critics all misuse or even fabricate statistics to give voters a skewed picture of reality. This time we’ll just offer the accurate numbers.

Here — in a graphic suitable for framing, embossing, emailing to friends or posting on social media — is an accurate statistical picture of key changes that occurred since Obama took office in January 2009. The indicators are all derived from the most authoritative and up-to-date sources available.


Readers may draw their own conclusions about how much credit or blame the president personally deserves for any of them. What we can vouch for is that these measures are the most recent available, from authoritative sources, and cover the time since Obama took the oath of office.

Zig,

The fact that my insurance has gone up and services down pretty much as long as I can remember really leads me to believe that regardless of Obama care costs are going to go up and I attribute that to unmitigated Greed of the health insurers.

At least with Obamacare I know if a loved one gets sick and loses their job there is a chance for them not to lose everything they have. That is a good thing. I suffer from severe bouts of empathy thus I am unfit for the Republican party.

and, more on the '3rd party candidate/spoiler' argument, this in regards to perot:

The effect of Ross Perot's candidacy has been a contentious point of debate for many years. In the ensuing months after the election, various Republicans asserted that Perot had acted as a spoiler, enough to the detriment of Bush to lose him the election. While many disaffected conservatives may have voted for Ross Perot to protest Bush's tax increase, further examination of the Perot vote in the Election Night exit polls not only showed that Perot siphoned votes nearly equally among Bush and Clinton,[26] but of the voters who cited Bush's broken "No New Taxes" pledge as "very important," two thirds voted for Bill Clinton.[27] A mathematical look at the voting numbers reveals that Bush would have had to win 12.2% of Perot's 18.8% of the vote, 65% of Perot's support base, to earn a majority of the vote, and would have needed to win nearly every state Clinton won by less than five percentage points.[28] Furthermore, Perot's best results were in states that strongly favored either Clinton or Bush, or carried few electoral votes, limiting his real electoral impact for either candidate.

yeah, it's been a yearly thing for us as well. i'm looking into insurance thru my job, as it appears to be lower than his has been.
as for costs, medical care costs have been going up at a very high rate for years. no surprise that premiums have as well. and yet, for our care getting more and more expensive, americans are no healthier. so why spend all that money if there's nothing to show for it? and i'm afraid obamacare hasn't done really anything to bring actual medical costs down. all they've done is informed doctors that medicare/caid reimbursements will drop. it's becoming very, very difficult for people to find medicare/caid doctors any more.

LOL I posted that on the wrong thread as a response to your insurance post.

no worries. i'll converse with you where ever you prefer. :D

Naw. You can be a "real" Republican: