Third-party quandary.

• Author: Chan, Alice
• Position: Letters to the Editor - Letter to the editor

Thank you, Matthew Rothschild, for the very interesting piece in the September issue, "The Third-Party Dilemma."

This is a subject that has been much on my mind of late, but I've been coming at it from a direction not addressed in the piece: voter turnout.

Voter turnout in elections is vital. And in my area, Greens (the dominant third party here) vote less often than Republicans or Democrats.

I've examined voter turnout by political party in my own 2nd Congressional District in California. This district, encompassing the six counties on the northern California coast, is one of the most progressive districts in California. It's home to nearly 12,000 registered Greens--10 percent of all the Green Party registered voters in California. The Green Party candidate for President in 2004, David Cobb, lives here.

It would be logical to assume that in a district like this, Green party voters might actually show up to vote, but most of them don't.

In the California June 2012 primary election, when Jill Stein and two others were running for the Green nomination for President, only 2,600 Green voters bothered to cast a ballot in my district for any of the Green Presidential candidates-just a 22 percent voter turnout. Contrast that with the Republicans and Democrats, who turned out at 46.5 percent.

In 2008, when Cynthia McKinney ran for President as a Green, only 18 percent of the Greens in the district turned out to vote for her.

Even worse, when local hero Cobb was the Green candidate for President in 2004, only 15 percent of the Greens came to the polls for him.

If the third party choice is to be meaningful at all, the Green Party must actually learn how to deliver the votes for their candidates.

Alice Chan

Sebastopol, California

While I enjoyed the give and take in your discussion of the dilemma progressives face in deciding whether to vote for Obama or a third party candidate, I wish that you had touched upon what I consider an obvious solution: Vote for a third-party candidate in a state that is not in play and vote for Obama if you live in one of the six or eight so-called swing states.

I am totally disappointed in Obama, for all the reasons you mentioned and then some. But since I live in California, which he will win by ten percentage points or more, I intend to vote for Jill Stein. Yet, I certainly understand why friends in Virginia and Wisconsin are going to vote for Obama, because they, as well as I, believe a Romney Presidency would be an...