One fundamental fallacy dooms all Alt Prez candidates to failure. Tell someone that you’re voting for a third-party candidate and he or she will whine, “You’re just throwing your vote away.”

No you’re not. You can do whatever you want with your vote. If you’re a liberal, your vote doesn’t automatically belong to the Democrats, no matter what those kleptomaniacs say.

Most voters confuse the election for a football game, and their insistence that you only vote for a potential winner is nonsense. Besides, the chance that your vote will actually make a difference is less than your chance of winning the lottery. Say you vote for McCain, and he wins your state by more than one vote: Your vote wasn’t necessary. Only on the lightning-strike chance that your guy does win your state by your one vote will you ever be the kingmaker (assuming you live in what turns out to be the pivotal swing state).

You can’t throw your vote away even if you don’t vote. Maybe you’re worthless, hate America or forgot it was Election Day again. When you don’t vote you register the statement that you don’t give a rat’s ass, which is probably true and always satisfying. And for the record, even if you don’t vote you can still complain all you want.

Race For 3rd Place

The Green Party of The United States picked as its Presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney, the former Georgia Congresswoman who was a Democrat until recently. McKinney did something no Presidential candidate has ever done before, picking hip-hop artist and activist Rosa Clemente as her VP running mate. It makes sense if you consider the slogan on McKinney’s runcynthiarun website: “We have to do things we’ve never done before in order to have things we’ve never had before.”

President McKinney would:

Push for a living wage

Change the Department of State to the Department of Peace

Create a single-payer health-care system

Implement solutions to global warming

Reduce fossil fuel consumption

Generate jobs in alternative energies and conservation

Get the country to apologize for slavery and the genocide of Native Americans.

Priority #1 for the Greens is fostering grassroots democracy, and 200 Greens across the country hold local offices. McKinney hopes to leverage that local strength into snagging 5 percent of the popular vote for President, which could get Greens a seat at the table like their counterparts in other countries enjoy.

Prediction: Looking good locally, the Greens continue to slip on the national stage, with McKinney finishing 6th.

You Be the VP

“Steve needs a peep to be his veep,” says Steve Kissing, pictured on his website offering you a seat in the empty chair next to him. Might be a good gig. The independent candidate from Cincinnati, Ohio, is honest, admitting that he stole $25 from his church when he was a kid, jaywalks all the time, and has been to a few strip clubs (“which are some of the most depressing places on earth”). He’d pull us out of Iraq fast, and give the largest ticker-tape parade ever for the troops, with Bush and Cheney required to cut up all the paper by hand. To apply for VP, go to www.kissing4prez.org, where you can also have the candidate kiss your baby, digitally.

Nazis Retreat

The National Socialist Order of America caught a bad break when their presidential candidate, John Taylor Bowles, suffered a massive heart attack. Down but not dead yet, Bowles suspended his campaign of promoting the ideals of Adolf Hitler and making the country a better place for the white race. You can send contributions and/or get-well cards to the NSOA and they’ll make sure that Herr Bowles gets them.

Scary Campaign Moment

Independent candidate Donald K. Allen of Youngstown, Ohio, was flummoxed when he was heading for a radio interview in Rockford, Ill., and realized he had forgotten his American flag pin. He looked all over town, including Wal-Mars, with no luck. He finally found one just in time to make it to his interview properly flagged, causing him to ask of the blogosphere: “Why aren’t they for sale everywhere?” Allen would go to war with Russia if they don’t pull out of Georgia within 24 hours, he’ll go the distance in Iraq and, being a sensitive veterinarian, he would put the weight of his administration behind shutting down puppy mills.

Best Idea From a Vegetable

Operation Vidalia Onion -- rings of defense! This is the strategic masterstroke of independent candidate Robert “In Rob We Trust” Jorgensen, who lives on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Rob, who’s of “Danish & Swiss German” ancestry, says his defense plan was inspired by the Swiss, and calls for the first onion ring to be positioned around the U.S. border some time after he is elected.