Third Party Candidates give Florida to President Obama
A gift that will keep on giving till 2016
By Dr. Richard Swier
President Obama, late in the night, took the state of Florida, thereby ensuring his second term in office.
An analysis of the numbers shows that Obama won Florida by a margin of 46,039 votes compared to his 2008 margin of victory of 204,577. What was different then from now? According to the voting results for Florida it was the third party candidates that gave the President the state and a second term.
The ten Independent candidates drew a total of 70,949 votes.
Gary Johnson famously stated, “If you want to waste your vote, vote for me.” Truer words were never spoken.
Presidential Election 2012 – Florida Votes
| CANDIDATE | PARTY | VOTES | PCT. |
| Barack Obama (i) | Dem | 4,129,360 | 3.5% |
| Mitt Romney | GOP | 4,083,321 | 3.5% |
| Gary Johnson | Lib | 43,479 | 0.0% |
| Jill Stein | Grn | 8,676 | 0.0% |
| Roseanne Barr | PFP | 7,971 | 0.0% |
| Tom Stevens | Obj | 3,792 | 0.0% |
| Virgil Goode | CST | 2,527 | 0.0% |
| Rocky Anderson | JP | 1,712 | 0.0% |
| Tom Hoefling | AIP | 912 | 0.0% |
| Andre Barnett | RP | 790 | 0.0% |
| Stewart Alexander | Soc | 776 | 0.0% |
| Peta Lindsay | PSL | 314 | 0.0% |
Chart courtesy of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
Finally, President Obama won the popular vote by 2,357,500 over Governor Romney. The Independent candidates took 1,781,825 popular votes. That leaves President Obama with a victory margin of 575,675 popular votes.
America is truly a divided nation. It does not get any closer than this.
Dr. Richard Swier
Richard holds a Doctorate of Education from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, a Master's Degree in Management Information Systems from the George Washington University, Washington, D.C., and a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts from Washington University, St. Louis, MO.
Richard is a 23-year Army veteran who retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1990. He was awarded the Legion of Merit for his years of service. Additionally, he was awarded two Bronze Stars with “V” for Heroism in ground combat, the Presidential Unit Citation, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry while serving with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam. He is a graduate of the Field Artillery Officers Basic and Advanced Courses, and U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.
Richard was the Founder/CEO of Sarasota Online, a high technology company that was sold to Comcast Cable in 1996. He helped start Backsoft Corporation an enterprise software development company in 1997 whose clients included Coca-Cola, Anheuser- Busch, Hyundai Electronics, Volkswagen, Moen and Goodyear. Backsoft was sold in 2001.
Richard twice chaired the Sarasota Better Business Council, sat on the Board of the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce and served from 2000 to 2009 on the Board of Directors of the Community Foundation of Sarasota County.
Fred B
November 7, 2012 at 6:53 am
Why do you assume that these voters would have voted for Romney?
John Harris
November 7, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Three of them are right up the conservative alley. If they weren't running Romney would have taken at least Florida. No doubt about that one.
Jim Steele
November 7, 2012 at 3:28 pm
206 +29= 235, last time I checked you needed 270 to win. 303-29= 274 still enough to win. Either your math sucks or you're a sore loser because you chose to support a loser like Romney.
Blairolina
November 7, 2012 at 4:53 pm
What is your source on the Gary Johnson quote? I can't find it anywhere on the web. I'd love to send it to my son, but only if it's accurate. If it's so "famously" quoted, it should have been easy to find.
Kathy M Nawara
November 7, 2012 at 5:46 pm
I'll bet they also used all the write in votes for Ron Paul as well to keep him ahead or even with Romney
Kathy M Nawara
November 7, 2012 at 5:48 pm
Write-in Friendly States and their electoral college count!!!!!!
Alabama=9
Alaska=3
Cali
fornia=55
Connecticut=7
Colorado=9
Iowa=6
Kansas=6
Kentucky=8
Maine=4
Maryland=11
Massachusetts=11
Minnesota=17
Mississippi=6
Missouri=10
Nebraska=5
New Hampshire=4
New Jersey=15
New York=29
North Dakota=3
North Carolina=15
Oregon=7
Rhode Island=4
Pennsylvania=20
Vermont=3
Washington=12
Washington DC=3
Wisconsin=10
Wyoming=10
Unknown potentials:
Florida=29
Hawaii=4
Kathy M Nawara
November 7, 2012 at 5:49 pm
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The right to have your vote counted, and counted clearly is included in the below court case, so even if your State claims the right not to count your vote they are wrong. Voter tampering is treason.
Excerpts from: Reynolds v. Sims (1964), 377 U.S. 533
“Obviously included within the right to choose, secured by the Constitution, is the right of qualified voters within a state to cast their ballots and have them counted. . . .” (From Part II)“29. There is more to the right to vote than the right to mark a piece of paper and drop it in a box or the right to pull a lever in a voting booth. The right to vote includes the right to have the ballot counted. . . . It also includes the right to have the vote counted at full value without dilution or discount. . . . That federally protected right suffers substantial dilution . . . [where a] favored group has full voting strength . . . [and] [t]he groups not in favor have their votes discounted.” [Emphasis added.]“40. No one would deny that the equal protection clause would . . . prohibit a law that would expressly give certain citizens a half-vote and others a full vote. . . . [T]he constitutionally guaranteed right to vote and the right to have one's vote counted clearly imply the policy that state election systems, no matter what their form, should be designed to give approximately equal weight to each vote cast. . . . [A] state legislature cannot deny eligible voters the right to vote for Congressmen and the right to have their vote counted. It can no more destroy the effectiveness of their vote in part and no more accomplish this in the name of "apportionment" than under any other name. [Emphasis added]”“Undoubtedly, the right of suffrage is a fundamental matter [p562] in a free and democratic society. Especially since the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and political rights, any alleged infringement of the right of citizens to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized. Almost a century ago, in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, the Court referred to "the political franchise of voting" as "a fundamental political right, because preservative of all rights." 118 U.S. at 370. [Emphasis added]…..And, if a State should provide that the votes of citizens in one part of the State should be given two times, or five times, or 10 times the weight of votes of citizens in another part of the State, it could hardly be contended that the right to vote of those residing in the disfavored areas had not been effectively diluted. It would appear extraordinary to suggest that a State could be constitutionally permitted to enact a law providing that certain of the State's voters could vote two, five, or 10 times for their legislative representatives, while voters living elsewhere could vote only once. And it is inconceivable that a state law to the effect that, in counting votes for legislators, the votes of citizens in one part of the State would be multiplied by two, five, or 10, while the votes of persons in another area would be counted only at face value, could be constitutionally sustainable. Of course, the effect of [p563] state legislative districting schemes which give the same number of representatives to unequal numbers of constituents is identical. [n40] Overweighting and overvaluation of the votes of those living here has the certain effect of dilution and undervaluation of the votes of those living there. The resulting discrimination against those individual voters living in disfavored areas is easily demonstrable mathematically. Their right to vote is simply not the same right to vote as that of those living in a favored part of the State. Two, five, or 10 of them must vote before the effect of their voting is equivalent to that of their favored neighbor. Weighting the votes of citizens differently, by any method or means, merely because of where they happen to reside, hardly seems justifiable. One must be ever aware that the Constitution forbids "sophisticated, as well as simple-minded, modes of discrimination." Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268, 275; Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, 342. As we stated in Wesberry v. Sanders, supra: [emphasis added]We do not believe that the Framers of the Constitution intended to permit the same vote-diluting discrimination to be accomplished through the device of districts containing widely varied numbers of inhabitants. To say that a vote is worth [p564] more in one district than in another would . . . run counter to our fundamental ideas of democratic government. . . . [n41] “
MDJ
November 8, 2012 at 5:17 pm
The problem is the party bosses know that the people will vote for whomever they put there, The people who voted third party would not have given their vote to Romney anyway. In October 2011 I told a lot of people that Romney would get the nod over all others and they laughed at me. All party supporters voiced their opinion that they would not vote for Romney and after he got the nod they said well I guess I have no choice. How do you vote for the guy who lost to the guy (McCain) that lost to Obama? Because they know they have loyalty to the party and not the Constitution they offer the person they want. Did anybody other than me notice that neither candidate ever mentioned the Constitution? In my opinion, a person who votes straight republican is no different than a person who votes straight democrat. Both are uniformed voters.