Document:LP News 1972 November Issue 11: Difference between revisions

With official, final figures still unavailable, due to the lethargic nature of government election officials and the low priority given to write-in votes, we are unable to report with certainty the actual number of votes that will officially be reported as having been cast for the Hospers-Nathan ticket. All available evidence indicates that the final total will be in excess of 5,000 however, which means that the real total is probably in excess of 10,000, as write-in votes are not even tallied in many states.

As expected, the LP ticket did the best in the two states  where Hospers and Nathan were listed on the ballot. In Washington, the State Election Commission has stated that the H-N ticket pulled about 1,400 votes; all returns except absentee ballots are included in this figure. In Colorado, final and complete returns give the LP ticket 1,108 votes. In each of the two states, the Hospers-Nathan vote works out to slightly better than one vote out of every 1,000 cast, which is not bad, in view of the fact that LP membership in each state was less than 75 as of Election Day.

Starting from a three-state total ih the area of 3,500 votes, we can add 50 votes from Utah, 150 from Texas, and 95 from three precincts in Anchorage, Alaska (Alaska total will no doubt be considerably higher). Reports from other states where an organized write-in effort was conducted are not yet available; it seems reasonable to assume that at least another 1,200 votes were cast for Hospers and Nathan in the 44 other states, thus bringing the nationwide total to at least 5,000. Actually,

this is a conservative estimate; the reported total may be in excess of 7,000, and might even be 10,000, although we doubt it. We hope to get final, complete figures from Congressional Quarterly, which tallies these figures, by early next spring.

First, and perhaps of most immediate inter est, is the fact that the LP did better, in terms of votes, than several other, better-known and more experienced minority parties, in the two states where all significant minority parties were on the ballot ( Washington and Colorado).

In Washington, there were a total of eight parties on the ballot -- the two major parties, us, the American Party, the  Communist Party, the Peoples Party, the Socialist Labor Party, and the Socialist Workers Party. In Colorado, the Prohibition Party was also on the ballot, bringing the total to nine.

In Colorado, we were able to get two LP candidates on the ballot -- Pipp Boyls for Congress, and Hue Futch for State Legislature. Both Pipp and Hue pulled about 1½% of the vote, in their respective races {2,000 votes out of 150,000 and 240 out of 16,000 respectively), even though both ran with practically no money, and very few campaign workers {Hue had about $120, and six workers; Pipp had about $1,000 and about 20 workers). These figures indicate that even with limited resources, we can draw 1½% of the vote, which would work out to 1.2 million votes, nationwide in an election where 80 million votes are cast. And we should have about as many members in each Congressional District, on the average, throughout the nation in '76 as we had in Pipp's District this year.

A third statistic of interest. In the states where Hospers and Nathan were on the ballot, our cost per vote received was about 50¢ -­ as compared to about $1 per vote for Nixon, McGovern and Schmitz. And minority parties usually get less votes per dollar spent than the major parties! This 50¢ per vote figure also held true for Pipp Boyls and Hue Futch.

We nominated a Presidential ticket, and our two candidates, Dr. Hospers and Mrs. Nathan, traveled a total of over 10,000 miles, and spoke to over 5,000 people in person, and reached an estimated 25 million via radio and TV, The Party, and its candidates, received newspaper and magazine writeups totalling approximately 2,000 column-inches that we know of; the actual total was almostcertainly at least twice that much. (2,000 column-inches is the approximate equivalent of 12 full-size newspaper pages, or 24 tabloid pages.) The papers and magazines giving us coverage ranged from The New York Times, Denver Post, and Chicago Tribune and other such "establishment" papers to underground papers like the Village Voice and Los Angeles Star. Even the government gave us some coverage, via the Stars and Stripes and the Public TV Network. We got mentioned in Newsweek, and Jeffrey st. John gave us a good story on the CBS radio network program Spectrum.

The LP is now generally recognized as one of six significant minority parties in the United States -- no mean achievement, cons idering the fact that there were over a dozen candidates running for President this year, not counting Nixon and McGovern. In the two states where Hospers and Nathan were on the ballot, they outpolled several of the other minority-party candidates, despite the fact that we had less people and less money.

It was voted to spend $900 to run two ads in non-movement publications, to reach new prospects. $300 will be spent for a half-page ad in Analog Science Fiction, and $600 for a half-column ad in Intellectual Digest. The Analog ad will promote the LP directly, while the ID ad will promote the paperback edition ofDr. Hospers• book; the latter is to take advantage of a 40% reduced rate for book ads. The book orders will go directly to Reason, the publisher, and Reason will forward to us the names of all respondents. In addition, Reason is giving us six full-page ads at no charge, in return for our paying for the ID ad. Both of these ads will run early next Spring.

[[Category: LP News]]