wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (01/30/85)
I have been holding the following info from a newspaper clipping for months; however, it appears that I'll never get caught up on the several-hundred backlogged postings in net.politics, and older ones are being deleted faster than I can read, so this might be duplicative info, but, since it is in line with pre-election discussions, I thought it was worth posting. Also, I never saw any explanation or received any reply to my posting asking why, after I had been assured by Libertarians on the net that Bergland WOULD be on the Missouri presidential ballot, that he wasn't there at all, either on the printed info posted on the wall, nor on the little booklet that guides the punch-card entries. (If anyone has this info, please MAIL me an explanation -- I don't know if I will ever be able to see what you post in net.politics, though I try with the best intentions...) Anyway, here's the info, extracted from a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article of unknown (December) date: MINOR PARTIES BIG LOSERS IN ELECTION WASHINGTON (AP) -- Walter F. Mondale was not the only loser in President Ronald Reagan's landslide last month. Third-party candidates fared worse than in any recent US election. ... the vote for third-party and independent candidates was down sharply from the last four White House races. According to the certified tallies ... a dozen minor party or independent candidates got only about 600,000 votes this year, led by the Libertarian Party's David Bergland, who was on the ballot in 39 states and got 227,949 votes. Independent Lyndon LaRouche, the maverick conservative who also ran in the Democratic primaries, was next with 78,773 votes, followed by feminist Sonia Johnson, who got 72,153 votes under the Citizens Party banner. These figures include write-in votes reported by some, but not all, states. The turnout exceeded 92.6 million votes -- 6 million more than in 1980. Bob Richards, the Populist Party candidate and former Olympic pole vaulter, got 62,371 votes; Dennis Serrette of the Independent Alliance, 47,209; Communist Party chief Gus Hall, 35,561; Mel Mason of the Social Workers Party, 24,687 [sic -- I thought it was the SOCIALIST Workers Party(?)]; Larry Holmes of Workers World, 15,220; Delmar Dennis of the American Party, 13,150; and Ed Winn of the Workers League, 10,801. [I would think there would be some apostrophes on some of those party names, but this is how they were printed...] Earl F. Dodge of the Prohibition Party got 4,242 votes, and Gavrielle Holmes, a second Workers World candidate in some states, 2,718. John B. Anderson, the former Illinois Republican congressman who got 5.7 million votes as an independent in 1980, endorsed Mondale, but his name was still on the ballot in Kentucky under the banner of the National Unity Party of Kentucky. He got 1,479 votes. In Nevada, voters had a chance to cast a ballot for "none of the above", and 3,950 did. ***End of article*** I'm not sure what all this means, except maybe bad news for the diversity of opinion that formerly strengthened American politics. I think all candidates should be on the ballots in all states, and their votes publicized, not buried where it is usually impossible to discover. How many people DID vote for "Bill the Cat", anyway? Will Martin USENET: seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin or ARPA/MILNET: wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA