I have also heard many people say “a no-vote is a vote for Obama”, so whether or not YOU say it, it has been said.

But getting to the core of the issue. You say that there is a 50-50 “liberal/conservative” split, and a third-party candidate makes that 50-40-10 (or 50-49-1, even). You make many assumptions. 1: That the “conservative” candidate is actually “conservative” (Romney was NOT). 2: That the third-party candidate does not “steal” a hefty amount of votes from the “liberal” (this DID happen). 3, and perhaps most relevant: That the resultant votes for the third-party candidate would have actually enabled the “conservative” to win (this WAS NOT the case).

Regarding your final point, you have disregarded some important elements of my position. 1: There was NOT a “huge” philosophical difference between the two remaining candidates in the 2012 POTUS race; they were minor. 2: It would NOT have been better at a macro-level had Romney won, in my opinion; you speak of “the real lives of real people”, but do you REALLY apply that principle to people in foreign countries where Romney wanted to EXPAND U.S. interventionist warfare? 3: If it “behooves” YOU to choose between Hitler and Stalin, which do YOU choose? That IS a serious and relevant question, and maybe it will help illustrate how people like myself feel when told to choose between two candidates whom they hold pretty much zero in common with ideologically and politically. And how will YOU feel when the Fascists and Communists tell YOU that you’re “wasting your vote” by voting YOUR conscience?

Finally, let’s be honest: whether Romney or Obama won, nothing would have changed. If candidates like yours are ACTUALLY genuinely concerned about winning votes that otherwise go to third-party candidates, maybe they should actually assimilate and endorse the important principles those third-party candidates and voters espouse, instead of blaming them for their own lack thereof.

Regarding your comment that someone might believe that “Anyone who doesn’t vote…votes for my candidate’s main opponent”, obviously anyone who doesn’t vote has no effect whatsoever on the outcome. I have never said anything of this kind, since it makes no sense whatsoever. So at this point, we can finally get to the actual core of the question, the only part of your dissertation which really addresses my concern. When there are three candidates, and one is rather liberal and two are rather conservative, those voters who tend toward conservatism are typically split, some voting for conservative A, and some for conservative B. When the overall voting population is pretty evenly split in its philosophy between conservatism and liberalism, we can assume that about half will vote for the liberal and half for the conservative side. As I wrote to you earlier, a simple scenario would use ten voters. If they are evenly split philosophically, we can assume that five will vote liberal and five conservative. In the 2012 race, that would mean five votes for Romney and five for Obama. However, if a third party candidate joins the race, who is seen by the large majority of the voters to be conservative, we can rightly assume that perhaps one of the ten voters will vote for the third party guy. The net result would become five votes for the liberal, four for the conservative, and one for the third party guy. Multiplied by one million of these scenarios, Obama receives ten million votes, Romney nine million, and Johnson one million votes. Therefore the liberal wins the race because the conservative vote has been split. Lacking a more technically precise way of stating this idea, the phrase is used that a vote for the third party conservative helps the liberal candidate to win the race. It’s called “splitting the vote”. Everyone knows this to be true, no one disputes that this phenomenon occurs. It makes perfect common sense, but for some reason you refuse to admit this. There is always the possibility that the third party guy takes votes equally away from each of the other two, but in this case, as in most, the third party guy is more closely associated with one than the other, and in this case, Johnson and other third party candidates split the conservative vote, helping Obama to win.

Finally, regarding your challenge of the third party candidate being Jefferson or Christ – that’s a bit of a stretch. There are probably thousands of candidates who would have been better for America than the candidate who actually won. However, if the better candidate cannot or does not run a campaign which causes an adequate number of voters to vote for him, he loses. If, on the day prior to the election, everyone in the nation realizes that a candidate cannot win, and that there is a huge philosophical difference between the two remaining candidates in the race, then I believe it behooves (yes, behooves) every voter to choose between one of the two viable candidates, since the long-term impact on the nation will be considerable. A US President will have a huge impact on law and policy for decades to come, as well as making appointments to federal circuit courts and the US Supreme Court. These laws and policies will have real effects on the daily lives of real people, and will affect their way of life and ability to prosper. I understand the concept of “voting one’s conscience”, but one’s conscience may also want to consider the real effects of a third-party vote on the real lives of real people (perhaps as yet unborn, and therefore at risk) for decades to come.