After 6 rounds of voting Bob Barr has been nominated as the 2008 Libertarian Party candidate for President of the United States.The final results:

Bob Barr: 324
Mary Ruwart: 276
NOTA: 4

I was hoping for Ruwart. At this point I do not believe Barr to be authentically libertarian. This may be the end of the LP as we knew it if the conservative takeover conspiracy is to be believed.

5th vote:

Ruwart: 229
Barr: 223
Root: 165
NOTA: 6

Root will be dropped from the next ballot. Even though there are only two candidates left, they must get a majority of delegate votes to be nominated. “None of the above” and write-ins are included in the total.

Root just endorsed Barr and said he hopes to be the VP candidate.

4th vote:

Barr: 202
Ruwart: 202
Root: 149
Gravel: 76
NOTA: 2

Gravel will dropped from the next ballot.

3rd vote:

Barr: 186
Ruwart: 186
Root: 146
Gravel: 76
Phillies: 31
NOTA: 2

Phillies will be dropped off the next ballot. Phillies got up and declined to endorse anyone.

2nd vote:

Barr: 188
Ruwart: 162
Root: 138
Gravel: 71
Phillies: 36
Kubby: 32
NOTA: 1

Kubby will now be eliminated on the next ballot. Kubby got up and endorsed Ruwart.

1st vote:

Bob Barr: 153
Mary Ruwart: 152
Wayne Root: 123
Mike Gravel: 71
Geo. Phillies: 49
Steve Kubby: 41
Mike Jingozian: 23
Ron Paul (WI): 6
Christine Smith: 6
NOTA: 2

Jingozian and Smith will be dropped from the next ballot. Following the vote announcement, Mike Jingozian spoke and endorsed Mike Gravel. Christine Smith got up and gave an anti-endorsement of Bob Barr.

Part 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Entertaining and interesting. As I’ve said before, it’s good to see another face putting out these ideas on a national forum. Doesn’t say he’ll run but he really doesn’t seem to say he won’t. “Give me ballot access and all beat them all.” Will anyone in the LP approach him? There are a lot of LP candidates right now and I don’t know that we need another… but Ventura is surely better than a good portion of them.

You really have to love how partisan and clueless those pundits are. Jesse is up there ripping the system a new one and pundits try to classify him as simply as a “independent voter.”

http://www.youtube.com/republicandebate

• 8:32PM - Paul gets his first question. It’s about the NAU, CFR and conspiracies that his supporters believe. Looks like I was correct that they would try to make Paul and/or his supporters look bad. He answers it well.
• 8:37PM - What top 3 federal programs/organizations should be cut to save money. Thompson spins the question and talks about SSI. Paul doesn’t say IRS unfortunately but Huckabee picks up on that and does… gets good applause for it.
• 8:41PM - McCain attacks Paul on being an isolationist and receives a round of mixed boos and cheers. Paul’s reply has mixed response. Cooper cuts him off while not cutting off Rudy and Mitt at the beginning.
• 8:45PM - Paul pledges not to raise taxes but points out unlike the others that they need to cut spending.
• 8:46PM - Romney and Giuliani make excuses to support corn subsidies.
• 9:00PM - Rudy supports gun regulation and current gun laws.
• 9:09PM - Paul states that a woman should not be charged if she has an abortion. Primarily that it’s not a federal function.
• 9:24PM - Rudy says that he will make Muslims not hate us by keeping strong on islamofascism. I’m pretty sure that’s the reason they are pissed in the first place.
  
• 9:26PM - McCain claims he was the only one who said the Rumsfield plan was “doomed to failure.” I’m pretty sure Paul had said that the entire thing was doomed to failure including Rumsfield’s plan.
• 9:28PM - Romney talks about not wanting ‘terror suspects’ to have the same legal rights to trial as others in this country. Gets schooled by McCain on waterboarding.
• 9:34PM - Will you make a permanent commitment to the people of Iraq? Paul says by giving the Iraqis their country back. Tancredo says Paul is unrealistic.
• 9:50PM - Romney attempts to spin a former statement by him about gays and lesbians in the military.
• 9:56PM - Tancredo schools Huckabee on spending on a mission to mars.
• 10:02PM - Romney squirms on Stars and Bars question.
• 10:06PM - How can we repair the infrastructure of America?
• 10:07PM - McCain claims a presidential line item veto is constitutional. Which isn’t not. Rudy puts him in his place.
• 10:08PM - Will Paul run as an independent? I thought he handled it well. Later, in the analysis, one of the CNN people says: “Paul was wrong, it was only 2000 people in PA, we were there.” I thought I’d seen a CNN article that claimed it was 5000 but I can’t seem to find it now. But NBC claimed it was 5000. Whatever. It was definitely larger than 2000.

The candidates were given the opportunity to create videos to show during the debate. Only Giuliani’s and Paul’s were any good.

I don’t feel it was as bad as invisipunk stated. It wasn’t great… but when are they? Paul was the last to receive a chance to speak. He was 6th in time spoken with 7:11 in front of Hunter with 4:53 and Tancredo with 3:41. Giuliani spoke for 15:45 which was longer than even the moderator or length of all the user videos. So Paul got 9.36% of the time out of all the candidates time spoken and Giuliani got 20.53% with Tancredo getting 4.8%. If equally distributed they all should have had 9:35. source: nytimes.com I think Paul held his own and spoke well. They threw some questions at him which IMO selected to make him look bad or not serious but he handled them well. They didn’t cover much domestic policy like healthcare and education but they’d needed 4 hours for that. And of course Paul is winning much of the online poll.

http://www.ballot-access.org/…

http://www.wcax.com/…

A (New Hampshire) judge has struck down a new law that allowed the state to sell detailed voter information only to major political parties.

Judge Carol Ann Conboy wrote that the law put small parties at a distinct disadvantage.

Before the law went into effect in July, most voter data, such as name and party registration history, had been available only on a town-by-town basis. Under the law, the information was available statewide, but only to parties that have received 4% of the vote in a statewide contest. In New Hampshire, that meant only the Democrats and Republicans.

I got into a discussion at Thanksgiving dinner about ‘wasted votes’ and how a vote for Ron Paul or the Libertarian candidate would be one. The arguments went that a vote for either would siphon votes from the person you dislike least of those who ‘have a chance.’ That reasoning makes no sense to me. Who defines who has a chance? The media? If everyone followed that reasoning it would only take a single individual to claim who could win and everyone else would need to vote for that person. When do you determine who to vote for? Do I support Ron Paul and attempt to get his name an platform out to the voters until the very second I vote for Rudy? Why would anyone invest the time into supporting a candidate they feel more closely matches their beliefs just to vote otherwise? They won’t… and that will create the self fulfilling situation of the ‘one who can win’ winning. Let us not forget that rarely is the propagation of information linear. If I’d never bothered to look into Ron Paul my family would have unlikely had shown any interest in him (not that necessarily support him now.) As support increases so does the acceleration and that will give credibility to the campaign… which unfortunately many people use as a major component in deciding who they will vote for. But even if you ignore all that, which is a major component IMO, there are black and white reasons why third party votes are not wasted. Statutes like this one in NH and the one in NJ and in so many other jurisdictions create completely biased environments for the other partys and independents. You can’t have the government provided tools to help you raise awareness of your party or it’s candidates until you raise awareness of your party. But for those who already have the awareness and means… we’ll subsidize them. Doesn’t seem fair and it’s surely not equal. If any vote is wasted it is when it comes to the popular vote for POTUS where most states’ electors vote with the majority. If 50% of NJ goes D than all those R votes above 5% are a waste… but with laws like the one in the article in effect a vote for Libertarian or Green or Constitution or Socialist wouldn’t be. You’d be helping to level the playing field.