from David, about voting Libertarian:

Over years of association with the Libertarian party, I think I've hear just about every objection there is to voting for a Libertarian candidate.

The sanest and most common objection usually goes like this:
"While I totally agree with the party in principle, the candidate has no chance of winning. I would be 'wasting my vote' and it makes more sense to vote for someone that has a chance of winning. Besides, a vote for the Libertarian candidate would be a vote against (lesser of two evils condidate) and would give (greater of two evils) a bigger chance of winning."

It's all true.

Here's where the objection breaks down:
Why doesn't a Libertarian stand a chance in the current election? Because they have performed poorly in the past.

Politics is a long-term game. It tends to support the "powers that be" by giving you a misdirection on the choices available. You ask "WHO can I vote for?" and are told "You can vote for THAT guy, or you can vote against him. Those are the only two choices."

The long term game works with incremental gains though. Just like trying to get ethics in on a planet. The lie is that "you got more people to vote for sanity, but you still lost the election. All of your effort was wasted." It's a lie. The truth is if you go from getting 1% of the vote to 2%, you have raised awareness. A few more percentage points over a few more elections and you start to show up on the radar. You get to be on the graphs alongside the real candidates in newspapers and on TV. You get more coverage, more invitations to debate, more donations to get your message out there.

So, don't look at it in terms of this year's election. The Republicans and Democracts would lose if they didn't have hundreds of years of continuing suopport. Imagine if the Democratic Party was to show up on the scene for the first time today. Their party platform would look nutty. "OK, so you're going to take everyone's money and buy WHAT?" The same for the Republicans "You want to make it illegal to do THAT?"

The Libertarian Party is the only one that operates from some fundamental axioms. If you can grasp these fundamental principles, you'll have a pretty clear idea on how a Libertarian would vote on nearly any issue.