under the American system, it is throwing away your vote. If there are 5 candidates, with one getting 23%, three getting 20%, and one getting 17%, Mr. 23 gets all the marbles, and the votes of 77% of the population are rendered utterly meaningless. So it is natural that we try to accumulate as broad of political parties as possible, leading to our milquetoast Right-wing and Left-wing parties, because you need a candidate with as broad appeal as possible, for fear that the other guy is slightly more popular.

You could argue that any time you vote for the loser, you're throwing away your vote (like in the last election when it was pretty apparent McCain would lose). Chances are, the election won't be decided by one vote anyway, so you don't even really need to vote. You're not going to have much of an impact on the election. Yes, if everyone felt that way, no one would vote and the system would break down. But how many national elections are decided by one vote? Even Florida in 2000 had a difference of over 500 votes.

As I said before, I believe that voting for the candidate I think will do the best job is not throwing my vote away, and to do otherwise is implicitly agreeing with something that I don't actually agree with. I don't expect Johnson to win, but I do want his platform to be heard by more people.

Lack of coverage is a large problem, and quite honestly not entirely their fault. It is significantly harder for 3rd parties to do well because the Republicans and Democrats didn't like what happened with Perot, and made it harder for them to get coverage. And if people don't know who they are, how can they raise more money to compete? I think they're right to complain about the lack of coverage. But I also think that they do try to do something about it. It's just that without coverage, it's really hard to do.

The best example is the difficulty of getting into the presidential debates. Many people watch those, but if there are only two candidates in them, then how are the rest supposed to get their position out there? It's exclusion of other candidates based on an arbitrary number. The only limitation for getting into the debates should be based on if it's even possible for a candidate to earn enough electoral votes to win.

And ending up with a worse evil might not be bad. Maybe we need to fail badly for people to wake up and realize that things are not going well. At the very least, if you get a horrible person in for 4 years, there's a better chance of getting someone at least slightly better in the next election.

under the American system, it is throwing away your vote. If there are 5 candidates, with one getting 23%, three getting 20%, and one getting 17%, Mr. 23 gets all the marbles, and the votes of 77% of the population are rendered utterly meaningless. So it is natural that we try to accumulate as broad of political parties as possible, leading to our milquetoast Right-wing and Left-wing parties, because you need a candidate with as broad appeal as possible, for fear that the other guy is slightly more popular.

You could argue that any time you vote for the loser, you're throwing away your vote (like in the last election when it was pretty apparent McCain would lose). Chances are, the election won't be decided by one vote anyway, so you don't even really need to vote. You're not going to have much of an impact on the election. Yes, if everyone felt that way, no one would vote and the system would break down. But how many national elections are decided by one vote? Even Florida in 2000 had a difference of over 500 votes.

As I said before, I believe that voting for the candidate I think will do the best job is not throwing my vote away, and to do otherwise is implicitly agreeing with something that I don't actually agree with. I don't expect Johnson to win, but I do want his platform to be heard by more people.

Personally, I am not excited about either option this year.  I was all for Obama 4 years ago when he ran on a platform of hope and change.  However, very little has changed and the changes havent always been better.  Now, Obama is running on a platform of look how bad this guy is, I can do better than him.  Isnt that sad?  Shouldnt he be talking about the change he wants to bring?  

Now, I'm not saying romney is much better, his platform is the same as Obamas.  Basically, my question is does Obama actually deserve to be re-elected?  If so, why isnt he telling us why?

It's not even that. It's "look how rich this guy is" and "look at how this guy did his job which I find morally wrong".

Seriously, if you're going to attack Romney, there are plenty of legitimate ways to do it. I'm surprised he hasn't attacked Romney for being a Mormon yet, at the rate he's going.