Since Allen Buckley's 3.4% take in the Georgia Senatorial race kept either Saxby Chambliss or Jim Martin from scoring 50%, there will be a December run-off. You can expect a lot of national attention, but the fact is that Georgia turn-out was pretty high, and those 126,000 Buckley voters are now a prime commodity. Whoever can pick up the majority of them is probably going to DC. Which means that both Chambliss and Martin suddenly would like a Libertarian's endorsement. Not so fast, the AJC reports Buckley as saying, Buckley said Thursday that by early next week he will have a campaign “commitment” form he will ask the two top vote-getters to sign before getting his endorsement. No signature, no endorsement, said the Smyrna lawyer and CPA. “It’s going to be mainly financial commitments that are reasonable,” Buckley told The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Buckley ran an underfunded campaign based on fiscal responsibility. He said that neither Chambliss nor Martin support the ma...

In order to determine the total Libertarian vote nationwide, I went state by state through the currently available results (about 98-99% at the moment) and looked for the highest vote total in any one of four categories--President, Governor, Senator, or combined Congressional races. This led to the following accumulation of data [which I am sure can be refined and corrected] Alabama—Barr 4,983/no other LP vote Alaska—Barr 1,090/Senate 1,606 Arizona—Barr 10,394/ Congressional 49,341 Arkansas—Barr 4,704/no other LP candidates California—Barr 50,006// Congressional 165,720 [11.5% of national LP vote] Colorado—Barr 9,398/Charles Jay 525/Congressional 11,276 Connecticut—Barr not on ballot/Congressional 1,815 Delaware—Barr 1,108/Congressional 3,583 DC—not on ballot Florida—Barr 16,587/Charles Jay 774/no other LP candidates Georgia—Barr 28,420/Senatorial 126,238 [8.8% of national LP vote] Hawaii—Barr 1,226/Congressional 10,247 Idaho—Barr 7,112/Gubernatorial 9,938 Illinois—Barr 19,061/Senatori...

Despite his disappointing overall showing, Libertarian Party Presidential candidate Bob Barr managed to garner sufficient votes in both North Carolina (15 electoral votes) and Indiana (11 electoral votes) to deprive Senator John McCain of what might have been the slenderest of majorities--assuming that all those who voted for Barr would have still come out, and would have voted for McCain en mass. OK, it would have been a tiny mass, but it was critical. I haven't checked to see if there was a similar Nader effect anywhere yet. Third Parties do make a difference--whether or not it is always the difference they are looking for.

... with marijuana decriminalization passing in Massachusetts and medical marijuana getting the nod in Michigan. Both, I might add, occurred in spite of sustained fear-mongering campaigning by the Federal government. [n/t Drug War Rant ]

The final results are not in, and both side say it will get closer before we know for certain. But with 63% of the votes counted Prop 8--the measure to remove the civil rights of same-sex married couples in California--is up 53.1% to 46.9%. This is a national disgrace, and President-elect Barack Obama's reluctance to throw his weight behind the defeat of this measure is more than disappointing.

Not surprisingly, in a near-landslide Democratic years, Delaware voters still returned Mike Castle to the House of Representatives with 61% of the vote. But Libertarian candidate Mark Anthony Parks polled 3,583 votes (1%). To put that in perspective, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr only managed 1,108 votes statewide. Mark, who campaigned persistently with no resources worth mentioning, established that there are at least 5-6 times more people in Delaware willing to vote for a Libertarian candidate than there are registered Libertarians. These are people that the Libertarian Party of Delaware needs to reach out and find. Suppose, for the sake of future elections, that the LPD could manage to locate 3,500 potential voters and convince each of them to donate $25 to a future statewide campaign. That would amount to more than $87,000 available to a future LPD candidate, which would (surprise, surprise) actually allow for some media buys. In the 4th House District, Tyler ...

For all the proud talk of breaking 1%, of breaking 1 million votes, Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr justified his critics by pulling in (according to the tally available at this moment) just 477,000 votes. By comparison: Michael Badnarik 397,000 in 2004 Harry Browne 384,000 in 2000 Harry Browne 486,000 in 1996 Or, looked at another way, here's what other Libertarian candidates achieved last night: Chris Cole (Senate, NC) 131,000 votes Michael Munger (Governor NC) 121,000 votes Allen Buckley (Senator GA) 121,000 votes Yvonne Schick (Senator TX) 184,00 votes The total for four Libertarian State candidates: 557,000 votes There are a lot of ways to slice and dice this, but the simplest is to acknowledge some stark realities: Bob Barr is not a Libertarian, and he got rejected by the majority of Libertarian voters. The strength of the Libertarian movement is in its usually ignored State affiliates. The strategy for electing freedom-oriented candidates needs to be rethought. Oh, and...