Please consider this email and also forward it to all of your
Libertarian-leaning friends. I know this email is a little long.
Please read it all the way through. You have my sincere gratitude
for doing so.

I realize that many of you like Libertarian ideals, but are afraid
to vote for the Libertarian candidate for President because the race
is again this year a very close one. Well, please consider the
facts that I present below. I am an engineer by trade, and to me,
the facts are what matter. The facts below should convince you,
that beyond any doubt, it is indeed SAFE for you to vote Libertarian
for President. By doing so, you can send a message to Washington
D.C. and to Atlanta that you are tired of the same old tax-and-spend
privacy-violating policies that both major parties repeatedly
endorse. On the other hand, the facts show that the wasted vote
is actually one that's for Bush or Kerry.

Georgia is a winner-take-all state when it comes to the electoral
college, and Presidents are still elected via the electoral college.
Simply put, what this means is that Bush is going to win a far
majority of the popular vote in Georgia and therefore win ALL of
the electoral college votes in Georgia. There is no question about
this.

Consider the "very close" race between Bush and Gore in 2000.
In Georgia, Bush received 55% of the vote against Gore's 43%,
beating him by 12%. As a result, Bush won Georgia overwhelmingly.
2004 will be the same. Further evidence of this fact can be found
at the Centre for Public Opinion and Democracy, where polling in
Georgia shows Bush with 58% against Kerry with only 37%. (And yes,
once again they include Nader who's not even on the ballot in
Georgia while excluding the Libertarian who is.) You can see the
results of this poll yourself by visiting their website at
www.cpod.ubc.ca/polls/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewItem&itemID=4662

http://www.cpod.ubc.ca/polls/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewItem&itemID=4662


So, it doesn't matter if you fear Kerry or fear Bush and choose to
vote for the other one because of it. Bush is going to win Georgia.
Why? Because there are at most 5% of you whom this email and
this message will reach. Of those, I'll be very lucky to convince
half of you. Therefore, I'm talking about at most a 2.5% shift in
the vote. (Oh, if I only had so much power!) That won't cause Bush
to lose, and that won't cause Kerry to win.

What it will cause is Libertarian Presidential candidate Badnarik to
suddenly get between 3% and 5% instead of between 0.5% and 1.5%.
I can assure you that such a sudden rise in the Libertarian
Presidential vote, even though still down in the single digits,
will definitely alarm the major parties. Not only in Washington
D.C., but also in the state Capitol in Atlanta as we move into the
2006 elections. It will push them ever so slightly toward our own
cause of freedom and liberty, or at least slow down their
current descent into tyranny.

These are the facts. They are simply the truth. Bush is going to
win Georgia. He may or may not win the Presidency, but there is
no doubt in any expert's mind that he is going to win Georgia. As
a result, voting for Bush out of fear for Kerry or voting for Kerry
out of fear for Bush is a WASTED VOTE. That's right, voting for a
major party candidate, IN THIS CASE, out of fear when you actually
like Libertarian ideals more is a wasted vote. Normally, you would
have said that voting for Badnarik is a wasted vote because, indeed,
he really does not have any chance at all of winning. However,
because Bush's win in Georgia is a given -- a given that will not
change when 2.5% or even 5% of you change your vote to Badnarik --
the wasted vote is the one that tries to change the outcome rather
than send a message.

Please don't waste your vote on trying to change the outcome in
Georgia. Please send both Washington and Atlanta a message. Tell
them that you believe in Libertarian ideals.

OH, AND ONE MORE THING. Many of you believe that the whole
Libertarian party is either against the original invasion of Iraq or
at least against the ongoing occupation. This is not true. There
is a whole continuum among Libertarians of opinions about the
War. Regardless of your own opinion on the War, voting for Bush
or Kerry will NOT cause any change whatsoever in the "message" sent
at a national level. That, of course, is because whether Bush or
Kerry wins is NOT going to be determined or even affected one iota
by Georgia.

On the other hand, realize that Badnarik is in favor of immediate
withdrawal. But does this matter? No. There's absolutely no chance
that Badnarik is going to win. So his position on the War will have
no impact. Therefore, it doesn't matter whether or not you agree
with him on this single issue. Furthermore, if anyone describes an
increased Libertarian vote as a message against the War in Iraq,
that supposed message will be drowned out by the din of other
louder messages on that side of the argument, especially via the
vote for Kerry. In other words, an increased vote for Libertarian
Badnarik will NOT be effective at sending any message about the
War whatsoever.

An increased vote for Libertarian Badnarik WILL, however, still
send a message about other more general Libertarian ideals, about
which the far, far majority of Libertarians still agree. This
message will have the most strength within Georgia itself for the
2006 elections, where it may have coattails for other Libertarian
campaigns that year. Of course, none of these have a very good
chance of winning, either. But the more votes Libertarians get
every election cycle, the more the incumbents will have to take
into account Libertarian ideals whenever they're legislating or
campaigning. If you've heard it before, this is the concept of
"moving the political center" and it's where historically third
parties REALLY have the most power.

So one last time, PLEASE DO NOT WASTE YOUR VOTE by voting for
Bush or Kerry in the state of Georgia, where the outcome
of the vote is already known. Instead, please MAKE THE MOST
out of your vote by voting for Libertarian Badnarik. From 1992
to 2000, the Libertarian candidate received 0.3%, 0.8%, and
most recently 1.4%. That last time, Boortz helped a great deal
by explicitly endorsing the Libertarian candidate. This year,
however, Boortz is NOT doing so. He, too, is in fact wasting his
vote and those who follow his advice, because even he can not
change the outcome of the election in Georgia. Unfortunately, he
CAN AND WILL dramatically effect the Libertarian vote. As things
are going now, we will see the first decline in Libertarian
Presidential vote in over a decade.

Let's do the opposite. Let's at least double that vote to 3% or
more.

Sincerely,
Dr. Helmut Forren

P.S. Please forward this to all your Libertarian-leaning friends.

P.P.S. If you don't live in Georgia, please do a little
investigating -- you may find that the same thing is true for
your own state, whether it's going to go overwhelmingly Bush or
overwhelmingly Gore. MOST states do fit in one of these two
categories.