You all know you have a 3rd choice for president whom the media keeps silent? (Gary Johnson all 50 states)?

He is actually on the ballot in 48 states. Also the terrified GOP is trying to lessen that number.

All we can do is exactly what you are doing spread the message and wake America up!

Yes, I voted early by mail for Libertarians, but would have been OK with any candidates other than Dems or Reps. Following below is my reasoning.

The banking deregulation and other policies that led to our current economic hardships resulted mainly from lobbying of both Democrats and Republicans by corporations involved in finance and housing. Maybe our decisions about if (and for how long) we wage wars are influenced by defense contractors. I'm sure there are many more possible examples.

People blame the campaign donation money, the two main political parties, the lobbyists, the PACs, the corporate interests, etc.

If you really trace the problem back to its source, those are not the root problem. We the voters are.

Public discussion about campaign finance usually has the unspoken assumption that voters won't consider a candidate who does not have tons of advertising and endorsements. That does not have to be true, especially because voters can use Google to easily learn about all the available candidates, and give them equal consideration. Granted, this requires people without Internet-connected devices to go find a way to access the Web. It also requires people to figure out what to type into the Google search box (something like "Presidential candidates"?), and how to dig through the results. My opinion is that it's reasonable to demand that effort of anyone who will bother to vote; people who can't be bothered to look at the full range of choices should not vote.

There's a saying: "In every democracy, the people get the government they deserve". We're getting abused because we choose the wrong representatives. It's our fault, and it's our responsibility to change that.

There's also a saying in business: "Management is always to blame." In a republic, the voters are the topmost level of management, because they choose the politicians.

We don't have to wait for anyone to fix the campaign finance system. We can consider candidates without special interests backing them. And we can refuse to vote for any candidate who accepts that kind of backing. That takes the power from the source of the money, bypassing the need for reform (and the lobbyists who would stop that reform because their jobs would be threatened).

For me, the most frustrating aspect of this is how easily voters could defeat the legalized corruption of campaign finance, if voters acted collectively across party lines. Voters can look at less publicized candidates. Voters can reject immediately any candidate who takes any form of influence buying. Voters can support candidates who publicly warn that they will give no beneficial treatment to donors of PACs that independently advertise on their behalf. By doing those things, voters could render that influence money powerless.

Most voters would not vote for a candidate who had been convicted of bribery while in public office. It wouldn't matter how "electable" he/she is or what his/her policy positions are. So why vote for any candidate who accepts legal bribes in the form of special interest money?

It's satisfying to deny consent to the existing system by voting that way.

No special-interest-influence-free candidate won at the conventions of either major party, so my voting strategy requires choosing neither Democrats nor Republicans. Other parties' candidates still appear on ballots. It does not matter which candidate, because that candidate will not win the election this time around. It's OK to vote for a goofball or weirdo. I would rather vote for a random minor party candidate I don't believe in than give consent to my abuse by voting for a bought candidate.

If more people start voting for those minor party weirdos you see on ballots, then sensible independent candidates will notice that and try running in various elections; actually, I've read plenty of discussion in the news about that happening this year, because voters are so dissatisfied with the usual class of candidates. We can vote for those people. As a nice bonus, this will pressure the two main political parties to adapt to voter preferences more than big campaign donors would like.

That third party strategy has a risk of splitting the liberal vote between two candidates (as happened with Ralph Nader) or the conservative vote between two candidates (as happened with Ross Perot). The best outsider candidate would be a non-weird centrist who can steal votes equally from both parties; if that centrist belonged to a party, the party would have to refuse all special interest money.

Lack of change results from almost everyone voting for either Democrat or Republican mainstream candidates. Why do we just jump back and forth, voting one or the other into office? By now, it's clear that that won't change anything.

Why should we forget about the past harm they did?

Was he the guy who played for the Mets back in 86, or was that Howard Johnson.

The "two-party" system has contributed greatly to the mess our country is in now. It has to stop sooner or later...