So, why not. Shouldn't take long.

There was a time when people thought Bob Barr might get three percent of the vote nationwide. (There was a Zogby poll at one point that showed him over five percent.) It was thought that he might swing various states — Georgia, Montana — from one party to another. That in a year when voters were nervous about both parties, he might be a strong voice for an alternative way. That he might be the strongest Libertarian candidate for President since the party started running back in 1972.

As it turned out, not.

Barr got 504,000 votes around the country. That sounds like a lot, but it's not. It's just 0.4% of the national total. He got fewer votes than Ralph Nader, which is saying something. In terms of raw numbers, he got more than any Libertarian candidate before… but only just; and in terms of vote percentage, he did worse than Ron Paul (1988) or Harry Browne (1996), both of whom got around 0.5%.

Worse yet, Barr didn't swing a single state. Democrats had been speculating that Libertarian votes, peeled away from the Republicans, might be a significant help this cycle. They weren't. Barr's vote was larger than the winner's margin of victory in only three states: North Carolina (Obama by 24,000, Barr got 25,000), Indiana (Obama won by 26,000; Barr got 29,000) and Missouri (McCain by about 3,000, Barr got 11,300). It looks very unlikely that Barr made a difference to any of these. Libertarian voters are drawn disproportionately from disaffected Republicans, but not entirely; the split is probably something like 60% Republicans, 20% Dems, and 20% people who wouldn't have voted. Break it down, and you see that Barr made no difference. Unless you count “turning narrow wins into slightly less narrow wins”. Which I don't think we do.

“With barely three weeks to go in the presidential race, we still know very little about the economic, domestic, social and foreign policy positions of the McCain and Obama campaigns,” Verney, campaign manager for the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate, said.

“All we know is that Obama wants to bring change and he isn’t George Bush. I guess that’s a good thing,” he said.

Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr

“We also know that John McCain is a ‘maverick’ - whatever that means.” But, Verney said, “the reality is that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two on major issues of the day. Neither has a serious plan for ending the middle east war and winning a lasting peace in the region. Neither is prepared to improve our national economic situation. Both are supporters of the Bush Wall Street Bailout.”

He went on to call Barr the only viable candidate who has taken “thorough, thoughtful, sound positions on issues from bailouts to gun control. Only Bob Barr has a clear vision for our nation and is committed to reducing the size of our government, eliminating our federal budget deficit and ending the conflict in Iraq,” he said.

Third party candidates offer face tremendous problems in the United States election system. It is difficult for them to get on the ballots in the individual states, and once they are on the major two parties often try to push them off, fearing their competition may hurt their own chances of winning.

The Libertarian Party is America’s official third largest party, the Democratic Party and Republican Party are the biggest parties. Other third parties that have nominated a candidate for president this year are the progressive Green Party and the highly conservative Constitution Party. Famous political renegate Ralph Nader participates in this year’s election as well, as an independent candidate.

“The biggest challenge we continue to confront is letting people know they actually have a real choice this November. So many people agree that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain are good for the future of America,” Verney said. “Once they know they have a choice, they are flocking to Bob Barr.”

Barr is making some headway in key battleground states, approaching and going over 5% in some polls in those states. He is still lagging far behind both Obama and McCain, however, making it unlikely that he will succeed in repeat Ross Perot’s success in 1992.

©2008 PoliGazette . All Rights Reserved.

Reason 2

More to come.

©2008 PoliGazette. All Rights Reserved.

The race to the White House also includes Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party, Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party, Cynthia McKinney of the Green-Rainbow Party, and Ralph Nader of the Independent Party.

You can read more about the six men and women (and their running mates) at Project Vote Smart.

Because of little attention paid to the third-party candidates in the mainstream media (where most of the world's bloggers get their information), there is little discussion in the blogosphere. But some content is worth repeating here.

We begin with last month's article on Global Voices Online by Pakistani blogger Teeth Maestro about his peers' reactions to the first presidential debate. Buried in the responses was this comment:

To be an effective leader one must also display honesty, compassion, & guts. Stand with Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, & Cynthia McKinney.

Of course, Ron Paul is no longer running in the election; Wikipedia has the facts, namely that Paul withdrew from the Republican Party before announcing his support for Chuck Baldwin.

The essence of the anonymous commenter's words remain valuable; that independent candidates hold as much worth as the Democratic and Republican parties.

This is echoed by Marcy Newman, an American blogger known for her pro-Palestinian activism, who writes in the first sentence of a Sarah Palin commentary:

This rant on Palin does not mean I support Obama/Biden. I don’t because on foreign policy they are one in the same. I support Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney.

Unfortunately, as Michael Merritt of PoliGazette recently remarked in the wake of Bob Barr attempting to remove Obama and McCain from the Texas ballot for failing to submit their nomination sheets by the deadline…

Libertarians and other third parties have always typically found obstacles to ballot access, usually the ridiculous numbers of signatures needed to even get on the ballot. Even then, they are often challenged on the veracity of these signatures.

Coming full circle, we turn to the United Kingdom and former Liberal Democrat Councilor Nich Starling who blogged about Pravda on Democracy in America. He begins with the following:

The comedy news channel Russia Today is always worth watching for five minutes if you need to be reminded how good CNN, Sky News, BBC or even Fox News is.

The story Russia Today is running with today is how undemocratic the US is for not giving Ralph Nader equal coverage with Obama and McCain, with the under current of the story being that the US is not a good democracy because it does not allow candidates equal access to the news media.

It is fair to presume that none of the independent candidates will work in the corner office, so where's the harm in writing more stories on the voices who won't win the votes?

©2008 PoliGazette. All Rights Reserved.

Meet Gloria La Riva, US Presidential Canditate for the Party for Socialism and Liberation. A political party, I should add, that proudly displays the image of Che Guevara on the header of its website.

The platform of this party is a simple one: George W. Bush is a terrorist, and Cuba's dictatorial regime is a model America should be emulating. If elected, Ms. La Riva promises to stop the biological weapons attacks America's imperialistic policies have been launching against Cuba, which she says has killed thousands of innocent Cubans.

And with all the hullabaloo over Obama's oratory prowess, Ms. La Riva–as you can see from this video of a mercifully short speech she gave last year–is quite an orator herself.

With all these alternative choices, it's going to be tough to make a decision this November.