Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin and his running mate Darrell Castle wound up with close to 179,000 votes, showing even with no ads and comparatively little media attention, the message of liberty resonated with many.

The tally was a 24% increase over the party’s vote total in 2004. However, this year we were not on the ballot in California or Pennsylvania, and in 2004 those states accounted for 33,000 votes. The Baldwin/Castle ticket even grabbed 3,418 write-in votes in Texas, the highest for any write-in candidate in that state.

While the Constitution Party lists their final tally to be “close to 179,000” votes, Wikipedia lists their total for 2008 as 181,342. Not too bad, really. Both the Libertarians and Ralph Nader finished ahead of the Constitutionalists, but they got a few thousand more votes than the Green Party. More from their message:

In addition to larger percentages of votes, 20 states will remain ballot qualified meaning fewer time-consuming and costly ballot-access campaigns will be necessary going forward. This is a 33% increase over 2004.

Many people do not realize that one of the biggest hurdles that young political parties have to overcome is actually getting on the ballot! You don’t just “wind up” on the ballot – you have to actually collect signatures and petition to be on the ballot in each state. It’s not the easiest process and as the quoted message above alludes to, it’s not an entirely quick process either.

It would appear that the Constitution Party made a decent showing for a third party with no financing and no advertising in the 2008 election. America needs a strong third party at the national level – could it be this one?

It’s a shame that Congressman Paul’s campaign was neglected by the major networks. The media has really shaped the current Presidential campaign and it’s disgusting. Any American out there who is looking for real “change” isn’t even allowed to hear different opinions by the American media. How many of the major media conglomerates are allowing the Libertarian or Green Party to join the debates? FOX isn’t. CNN isn’t. CBS isn’t. ABC isn’t. MSNBC isn’t. Speaking of NBC – I can barely watch their programming any more as their entire schedule of programming is so one-sided in favor of Obama that it might as well be funded out of the Obama campaign!

I know these media companies stick to some format that requires X% of the national polls to be in favor of your campaign, but they know that American masses are mostly sheep and vote for either R or D. Why not change your debate regulations to reflect the fact that there needs to be more than two views of how to move forward? Why not have regulations that allow the four political parties with the highest polling to be involved in the debate? If the Republicans get 44% and the Democrats get 44%, then the media should look to that remaining 12% of the opinion polls to see which third party candidates people are supporting.

All I know is that for a Republican and a Democrat to run around America saying “Change, change, change,” is completely ridiculous. What’s the definition of insanity? Always doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So America – keep voting Republican and Democrat and see if you get a different result…lunatics.