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[Guest guest]

Hello. I want to let you know about the candidate I am supporting for

president. I need to tellyou what I feel is important in THIS election.

For the first time in my life, I am concerned about an election and excited

about a presidential candidate! I'm voting for Ron . Ever heard of

him? He's having an incredible grassroots impact on the election. He's

quietly setting the standards on many issues. I believe our country has a

great need for this honest, consistent, liberty-loving candidate. Please

visit the following websites/youtube links to learn more about this man of

incredible integrity who is making many people truly ENJOY VOTING for once

in a long while. Your vote may seem like a small thing in the national

scope of this election, but it is a big thing for you and you can feel

confident in your choice. If you are thinking " who is the lesser evil? I

have no good choices, " take a good look and you'll want to VOTE FOR RON PAUL

and for best reasons YOUR VOTE WILL COUNT FOR SOMETHING and it will mean

something to this country and, most importantly, it will mean something

positive to you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_gKOCb4QBA

ronpaul2008.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_paul

Nanette Landen

if you have time, an article I found helpful:

Don't Waste Your Vote

Wirkman Virkkala

On Tuesday, millions of Americans will waste their votes.

Whipped up into a frenzy of fear and loathing, they will cast their ballots

for the candidate they regard as representing the Lesser of the two Evil

major parties on their ballots.

Of course, who qualifies as the Lesser Evil for will differ from the

Lesser Evil according to . 's Lesser Evil would like to rob a

little more, to pay and people like him. 's candidate connives for

the reverse.

Now, were they actually to think about it at any length, many s and

some s would prefer this robbery to stop; most would see what a bad deal

all this politic finagling is.

But the racket itself is rarely put up for a vote; instead, candidates for

the Evil parties are. And these candidates don't have much incentive to put

an end to the redistribution game. Robbery, when legalized, is profitable,

at least for the middle men. And the middle men in the legal plunder game

are the politicians and their clients with government jobs. And so the

candidates for the major political parties continue the racket.

It is easy to see why politicians wish the racket to continue. But why do

voters continue it? There are many reasons. But surely one of the most

striking reasons is that they believe an illusion, and thus prop up

America's two-party system and the racket it entails.

Your Vote's Instrumental Value

There are numerous other candidates than the ones most people vote for. The

Green and Libertarian parties, for instance, offer quite a few alternatives;

independents, too, pop up here and there on the political landscape. The

Libertarians, even, oppose the whole racket of robbing to pay —

which is a true difference between them and most other candidates.

But most people dismiss these minor-party folk. Since they do not belong to

a major party they are not likely to get elected — and so, the argument

runs, one wastes one's vote when one casts a ballot for one of them.

This is often said even by people who otherwise prefer candidates from a

minor party. But, in saying this, they've bought a con job. They've

forgotten to think about how one can truly waste a vote.

Wasting money is easy to define: one merely throws it away. Instead of

saving six nickels to buy a Coke, you do without the Coke entirely, and let

the nickels fall to the ground. That's a waste.

But if you vote for , or against , or don't vote at all, the

outcome of 's election does not depend upon your one vote. Unlike the

Coke — whose benefit to you is dependent on how you spend your nickels — a

candidate is not dependent on your one vote. Rarely does any candidate win

by a single vote. So your vote was not an instrument of any substantial

outcome — unlike the nickels and dimes you save or spend, your vote has

negligible instrumental value.

The True Value of Your Vote

That doesn't mean your vote may not have some other kind of value, however.

For most voters, votes are symbolic. The act of voting stands for their

commitment to peaceful political change (as opposed to revolution), for the

voters decision to work within the system; individual votes stand for their

convictions about what direction they think society should go. That's why

voters often wear little stickers on their lapels about the fact that they

voted, and also why they readily ignore the secrecy of the ballot and tell

anyone who asks how they intend to (or, after the election, how they did)

vote.

And since their votes don't have any instrumental value — once again, almost

never does an individual vote decide anything — the symbolic value is about

the only value the votes can have to the voters themselves.

And on this level of symbolism, the don't waste your vote argument against

voting for a minor candidate is not only foolish, it is perverse.

For if you vote for someone you dislike over someone you hate while

neglecting to vote for someone you truly approve of, you have done little

else than betray your values. You have wasted your symbol.

Mob vs. Mob

The don't waste your vote hokum feeds another aspect of democratic politics:

the mob mentality. People feel good about voting for a winner, and get angry

about the candidate who wins without their vote. In both cases, the symbolic

tie is linked not to the expression of one's beliefs and values, but to the

struggles between groups. And the hapless voter is apt to lose sight of any

principle, any ideal, any sense of balanced judgment.

But not everyone buys into this perverse tribal dynamic; a few people

continue to elevate discussion above the level of who wins and who loses

that the news people yammer about every election day. And when somebody

scoffs and throws out a don't waste your vote argument, they can scoff right

back, and ask:

If you don't vote your conscience, how can you be sure you have one?