That is the reason I am registered Independent and have and do vote a mixed bag of parties. However realistically and from a desire to see someone win that I am in favor of, at the very top of the political food chain there really are only two choices.

I have voted Green, Libertarian and Independent candidates in the past. I try to focus on issues that I feel personally strong about and work to map as much as I can to a candidate. It would be naive to think that I would map exactly and that there would never be a thing in someones past that I might disagree with or find wrong.

That said, for this election as well as four years ago the big issue,at least for me is the economy. It is a very complicated and politically messy issue. I personally feel things have gotten worse much worse. I see friends that I worked with 10 years ago in good jobs now struggling to find and keep jobs.

There is a lot of talk about national security and the focus is on our military but for me it loops back to the economy. How secure can we be when we fund those efforts with borrowed monies from countries that are working to take our jobs and we as a society have very fundamental differences in civil rights and freedoms. If we don't get back on our feet financially it won't matter we will have lost our way of life and maybe it is a fault of mine but I only speak English.

Given this and from what I have heard that the major party candidates have said I feel like there, for me, is only one choice and it isn't more of the same.

I understand that campaign promises are just what they want or hope to accomplish. True change is hard and can't be accomplished by a single person or party. There are no easy answers but there are right and wrong directions and right now we are going in the wrong one.

The harder part than just pulling the lever is following what is done, how they vote, and letting them know how you feel they are doing, good and bad. How they really vote by looking at their voting record. They won't always vote the way I want and given that bills can have a totally unrelated addendum tacked on at the last minute it is a very hard job and there are many, probably too many compromises that need to make to get anything of value done.

Locally it may be a different story and we should all do our part to make a difference and get the changes that we fell need to be made made. It is a hard thing to do an there are many different points of view and compromise is key.

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To be short and sweet:

I live in a 5 party system (Canada) and you still can't get anything done if the electorate get's split too much... and frankly, from what I've seen most parties aren't that different once their in office.

Two party, multi-party... it all comes down to how the population is feeling in particular during the election.

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I am seriously considering casting a protest vote. That is what it really is when you write in Micky Mouse or The Jolly Green Giant. Some times writing in a real person can be a protest, when they have snowball's chance in Hell.

Ona

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Vote Green Party - Gumby '08

:)

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LOL! You have my vote, sir!

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Warning: Another political rant by a Stark.

You and I have talked about this before. But I don't think that 3rd parties are the answer. Instead if people actually participated in the primary elections, then they would have a choice on who the major candidates will be in the general election. Instead, most people just wait until the general election, after the major candidates have been decided by the primary election. Then when they don't like the choices in the general election, they whine and complain and start looking to third party candidates. But if the third party candidates has no real possibility of winning. (Which has been true since 1912) Then any vote for them is actually a vote for the major candidate that you certainly would not vote for. When was the last time a 3rd party candidate even took 2nd place in the general presidential election? Answer: 1912 when Theodore Roosevelt ran on a third party ticket.

So if you want to make a difference and want good candidates available to choose from in the general election. Get involved in the early primary and caucuses. Join a party and run for the delegate positions. Then you can attend conventions and vote on candidates who 9 times out of 10 are chosen there before they even get to the ballot. Don't just wait until the general election, when the choice on who the candidates are has been made for you.

Neils

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My problem is that I don't think the two major parties work IMHO. Yes you are correct that if we bind ourselves to a party during the primary election we can help shape that battlefield, however I really dislike the fact that, in Utah, the Republicans require you to join their party in order to vote in the primary. All it does is pad their numbers and make them look more important than they really are.

Another issue I have with both parties is they are too alike than people realize. Especially when it comes to holding their hands out to the contributors who hold more power than the people do on some days. The Democrats and the Republicans have been feeding from the same troughs for years. Then when they get into office, they do the things that the parties did not allegedly stand for. Look back at the last eight years and tell me that the Republicans didn't tax and spend as much as the Democrats did. The sly wink and nod method of control is much easier when you only have one other party to convince. If we had multiple parties, then the power may be distributed a little bit more evenly. As excaliburca has shown, it may delay things a little bit more, but I would feel more comfortable knowing the power isn't with two highly corruptible parties.

In Carl's perfect world, all candidates would have to stand on their own platforms running as independents. This way people would vote according to their own values instead of protest votes or not wanting to let the evil (insert party name here) win.

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It's been pointed out other places, but I'm going to do it here anyway. Especially in current times, all political parties serve to do is further polarize the populace. In this time, especially, we the people need to be paying attention to the facts - without the cheer-leading spin both parties participate in, or the rose-colored-glasses of "ours is better than yours" - rather than whether there is a "D" or an "R" present with a given candidate's name. So long as politics is good for business in the sense that it is PACs and SIGs footing the bills for elections, and the elite class running, it will note really be "government of the people, by the people, for the people".

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So Say We All!

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