None of the above...

Whenever the Libertarian Party holds a convention and elects its officers, one of the choices on the ballot is always NOTA, or None Of The Above. It's a perfectly legitimate option.

There may be times when none of the candidates suit your fancy. The Palladium-Item recently selected NOTA in the District 54 race when it made its endorsements for the 2010 general election.

I have been questioned a few times about why Libertarian Party candidates who don't run active campaigns are on the ballot. Sometimes it is to provide an option.

You won't find NOTA on your ballot when you go to vote this November. In most places you will find a Republican and a Democrat, or maybe just a Republican, or maybe just a Democrat. And of course, if you are happy with the way the Republicans and Democrats have been running the government, you probably don't have a problem.

The problem comes if you would like for the Republicans and Democrats to stop spending so much of your money and running so much of you life. Your only option then is to abstain from voting for them. But the problem with that is they don't know why didn't vote for them. It could be that you're not happy with them, or it could be that you were just to busy, or it could be that you just don't care. Either way, they get 100% of the votes that are cast. That's not much of a deterrent.

However, having a Libertarian candidate on the ballot gives people that want a less expensive and less intrusive government a chance to vote for it.

Most Libertarian candidates run active campaigns, and certainly the LP is looking forward to the day when it has grown to the point that in every election, all positions are filled with active candidates.

Until that day arrives, every candidate that runs on the Libertarian ticket, whether that candidate receives 5%, 15%, or 51% of the vote, allows a growing number of voters to say that they believe limited government is a viable option, and that they would like to vote for it.

And then if you're still not happy with the choices, we'll see about getting NOTA on the ballot.

What's it gonna take?...

A country is a big thing to turn around, and undoubtedly, turning ours around will be a daunting task. But it might not be as daunting as some would have us believe.

Consider that when Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, the population of the United States was around 305 million. That puts the number of eligible voters at about 240 million, more or less. That means the 69,456,897 people that voted for Obama represent about 29% of possible voters, or about 22% of the total population.

Not to say that that's not a lot of people, but at least it's not all of them.

When you run for office as a Libertarian, you find out that a lot of people don't want to turn the country around. A lot of people want to keep it going in its current direction. And if you're running for office as a Libertarian, you realize that people who are satisfied with the direction our country has taken probably aren't going to vote for you. Ever.

And used to, when you ran for office as a Libertarian, you were probably going to get 1% or 2% of the vote. But we've seen those percentages increase over the years, and hopefully we will see them increase more this year. But probably not to 100%. And probably not to 50%.

But as more and more people decide they can't afford any more of the current direction, and start voting for a change in direction, it's not out of the realm of possibility that someday 25% or 30% of the population could decide that the Libertarians are right.

And sometimes that's all it takes.