I will never apologize for a third-party vote, and don’t even start with me on the whole “stealing votes away” argument.  The whole two-party system is a travesty and the electoral system is ridiculous.  Yes, I could have voted for Obama.  I was pretty damn excited about him in 2008, and he still has my general support.  But Jill Stein is awesomer.

I know that in whatever sense an individual vote counts, mine was counted.  (I know because I got a sticker!)  But the NY Times didn’t count it; they don’t look at write-ins.  Perhaps they are short-staffed…?  So in going back over the electoral results, I could only see votes that were cast for names properly on the ballots in the different states.  It’s weird, I think, that when we’re voting for a federal office we have different ballots depending on the state!  That doesn’t seem right, does it?

Anyway, here’s the breakdown, with helpful numbers for comparison so we can imagine how many people we’re really talking about.

Based on the NY Times report, there were 118,396,093 votes.  But that’s not counting write-ins, so I can assure you there were at least 118,396,095 votes cast.

About 59 million votes for Obama (59,561,001) and about 57 million for Romney (57,106,844).

About 2 million people voted for someone who was on their ballot, but neither Romney nor Obama.   (1,728,248 – let’s say 2 million just to be generous.  I checked the math and this all adds up ok.)

Of those:

We have 483,023 Actually Liberal votes (398,165 of them were for Jill Stein, counting me and Paul, plus some for Roseanne Barr and some for Rocky Anderson).

This area needs work, people.  Just for reference, the population of Raleigh is about 400,000.  We need to get this up to at least a million, like the Libertarians have.  It’s totally worth your time, even now, to look at the websites for these three candidates.  There’s another election in just 4 years!  Even if you prefer to keep voting for Democrats, this is what you can demand of them!  Look at these awesome policies!!!

We have 1,163,429 Libertarian votes.  (Almost all of those were for the actual Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, plus a handful of other candidates whose platforms were very similar).

Libertarians are ok.  They’re conservative in the sense that they don’t really “do” government at the federal level, which makes me wonder why they bother running for federal offices.  But on the other hand, I think I could actually live with privatized health care and schools, especially given how much I don’t like our current health care and schools anyway.  Plus, Libertarians are your best friends in case of the zombiepocalypse, because they can hunt squirrels and stuff.  And they seriously don’t care who you marry.  All my friends who supported Romney are probably Libertarians and just didn’t have time to look into it.  Hey, both of you – go read Gary Johnson’s website.  The Libertarians are here to stay and they’ll be on the ballot next time too! 

On the farther sides of the spectrum:

We have 17,031 socialist votes, split among 5 assorted candidates.  Of those, my favorite was Peta Lindsay, who at 28 years old could not actually have served as President, but who will have a kick-ass resume just for having been on the ballot in so many states.  She gets my vote for Spunkiest Candidate.  For those who feared the country was going Socialist, be assured.  17,000 people is about the number of people waiting for liver transplants; or if you like, the number of people that would fit into an average NBA arena.  The Internationale will not be uniting the human race any time soon.

163,807 sociopath votes:  mean, creepy people who are specifically hateful to minorities and in favor of establishing Christian practices as law.  These are the anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-immigrant, anti-kitten people.

160,000 people is the Guiness Book of World Records Record for “Doing the Wave.”  Liberals, note.  Most of the conservative votes swinging around are a million perfectly reasonable Libertarians.  The sociopath faction is small.  Just pray that God takes them to heaven soon so they’ll quit bugging us.

There was also a guy from the KKK (evidently) who brought in 2,598 votes in Colorado, New Jersey, and South Dakota.  And people who were on the ballot in only one state each (including “the pot guy” from Minnesota and “the prohibition guy” from Louisiana) all together collected 9,081 votes.   Again, as a reference point: 11 thousand people had to evacuate their homes due to a Colorado forest fire last summer, and 11 thousand people participated in a charity walk for breast cancer research in a San Diego park last weekend.  I think it’s probably safe to ignore these people unless any of them actually approach you in a parking lot.

And finally, dear friends, we have about 280 million citizens, so that means there are about 162 million people who simply don’t vote, either because they wouldn’t or couldn’t.

If I had nothing better to do,  I could make this into a pie chart!