http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/politics/15932040.htm

Please accept for once and for all that the impact of the Green candidate on the race _cannot_ be measured by adding the Green vote total or polling numbers to those of the Democrat.

As for “dirty underhanded tactics,” helping someone get on the ballot who will drain votes from one’s main competitor– that’s pretty far down the list.

And let’s remember that, because of the Electoral College, our presidential votes only count in our home states. If one’s state is reliably red or blue, he is, in my view, freer to vote for a third-party candidate.

Since the Green Party siphons votes mainly from the Democrats, I hope the Greens prosper everywhere.

Oh well, if Dem and GOP politicians had any sense we wouldn’t be in this horrible mess we’re in. A vote for any third party is better than voting for a Dem or a GOP. If only we could eliminate the Dems and GOPs and let the voters be confronted with intelligent debate between the Libertarian, Constitution and Green party candidates…We would be so much better off!

Let them sweat out ballot access for awhile.

That said, does a Republican seriously think that people voting for a Green would vote for a Republican as their second choice?

It’s interesting how traditional-thinking politicians and voters always throw around the “don’t waste your vote” nonsense, without stopping to think about what they’re really saying. In our winner-take-all system, any vote for someone who doesn’t win is wasted, whether the loser gets 1% or 49%.

What they really mean is that a vote that isn’t cast for a major party candidate is wasted, because these same people have no reservations about hustling to the polls to cast votes for doomed losers such as McGovern in ’72 or Mondale in ’84. Isn’t a vote for a Republican presidential candidate in the District of Columbia wasted? Or a Democratic presidential candidate in Wyoming? But no one ever says that it is.

If anything, the vote in such cases for the third party candidate is far more significant, since a higher-than-expected total for those candidates usually puts pressure on those who are elected, gives the party some political leverage, and helps establish the party’s foothold for future elections. I doubt we’d have had a New Deal without Eugene Debs and his 3% in 1920 and Norman Thomas’ 900,000 votes in 1932.

So a vote for George McGovern in Alabama in 1972 wasn’t wasted, but a vote for Norman Thomas in New York in 1932 was?

You make the call.

As for the Romanelli affair in PA, I would caution against making one of the fundamental mistaken assumptions of popular (and, alas, much academic) discourse about political economy: that rich people are better than the rest of us at predicting the future. Just because some rich people thought Romanelli would throw the election to Santorum does not mean they’re more correct than the many non-rich people who don’t think that’s an accurate assessment.

Obdviously, Topikna was not referring to the Green Party candidate, but to her alarm at the uknexpectedly strong write-in race of Constitution Party candidate Randy Stufflebeam. He has received some organizational endorsements, some friendly media coverage and has been able to run at least two different radio ads. It is hard to tell how his campaign will translate into people actually making the effort to write his name in, but he has done a remarkable job as a write-in candidate. It is clearly his candidacy she is nervous about, not the Green candidate, whose race probably stands to help her. Why do you think Rick Santorum’s people gave the Greens $100,000 to try to get on the ballot in Pennsylvania?