Do You Really Know -- Who Is Running For President?

Who's on first.
I don't know.
No, he's on third.
What?
What is on second!*

Has the election cycle become a comedy of errors?

Do you really know who is actually running for president?

Oh sure, you know about those two whiney candidates - Where'sMyMama and AnyoneSeenMyCane - and their pitiful VP running mates that tag along for the ride. But, do you know who else is running for the highest office in the land? ... oh, you probably don't even care ... you think America is just a two-party system, and you really really really wish one or the other of those parties would just go the heck away! However, truth be told, there are lots of other candidates you can vote for next Tuesday.

Who's on the ballot varies from state to state. Because of unfair election laws, hurdles imposed by the two major party-poopers to keep the riffraff out, most of the candidates can only make it onto ballots in a few states at best, and many can only make it on to their home-state's ballot.

If voters truly wanted to implement "change", they would all cast write-in ballots for "none-of-the-above" and send a decisive message to the politicians and their pooper parties that we have had enough of the bullshit! Unfortunately, write-in campaigns rarely work, especially beyond local level politics, and of course the major parties have pooped on this option as well. Most states have instigated rules such that a write-in candidate has to be registered before the election, some require the candidate to have been registered for the state primary and even receive a certain amount of the primary votes to be a valid candidate. All of which just serves to protect the special interests of the pooper-parties and their candidates while keeping the masses disenfranchised. Here's a little Write-In trivia: In 1920, Eugene Debs ran a write-in campaign from a federal prison and garnered almost 4% of the 26 million total presidential votes cast, the most votes ever received by a Socialist Party candidate in a national election. Debs was serving time for espionage resulting from his speaking out against World War One.

So abandoning the proposed last minute write-in campaign, we are left with picking from the ballot buffet of would-be presidents. I'm visiting in Colorado and checked their ballot. On Tuesday Coloradoans will be able to pick from a total of 16 presidential candidates. Now that's a PARTY! What choices do you have on your ballot?

Presidential Candidates on the 2008 Colorado Ballot

John McCain - Republican
Barack Obama - Democrat
Chuck Baldwin - Constitution
Bob Barr - Libertarian
Cynthia McKinney - Green
Jonathan E. Allen - HeartQuake ‘08
Gene C. Amondson - Prohibition
James Harris - Socialist Workers
Charles Jay - Boston Tea
Alan Keyes - America's Independent
Gloria La Riva - Socialism and Liberation
Bradford Lyttle - U.S. Pacifist
Frank Edward McEnulty - Unaffiliated
Brian Moore - Socialist USA
Ralph Nader - Unaffiliated
Thomas Robert Stevens - Objectivist

*Apologies to Abbott and Costello for the bastardization of their genius.