alt prez / By Richard Wall

The other candidates running for president

Second in a six-part series

(Aug. 28, 2008)  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.

GALLERY >

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

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