Maine’s presidential ballot boasts 6 choices

PORTLAND – Maine voters unwilling to cast ballots for President Bush or John Kerry on Nov. 2 have four alternative candidates to choose from.

The nominees of the Better Life Party, the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party and the Green Party are sharing the ballot with the Republican and Democratic candidates.

Former Green Party standard-bearer Ralph Nader is running under the Better Life banner, pitching a message of universal health care, higher wages, an end to the war on drugs and a pullout of troops from Iraq within six months.

The pro-environment Green Independent Party’s ticket has David Cobb running for president and Pat Lamarche of Yarmouth for vice president.

Green Independent is technically the only official third party in Maine. Supporters of the three other alternative candidates had to collect 4,000 voter signatures to win slots on the ballot.

Michael Anthony Peroutka is the candidate of the Constitution Party, which seeks to outlaw abortion and same-sex marriage and abolish the U.S. Department of Education and the Food and Drug Administration.

The Libertarian party, whose nominee is Michael Badnarik, supports an immediate pullout from Iraq, a stance it shares with the Greens.

While the Green and Better Life counterparts tend to attract Democrats, the Constitution and Libertarian candidates could draw votes from Republicans.

None of the four alternative candidates is expected to win, but each has a message to get out. And because the presidential contest is so even, candidates who can draw 1 percent to 2 percent of the vote could potentially decide races in certain states.

“You might think of them almost as utopians,” said Lawrence Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota who studies third-party candidates. “They’re casting a vote for a different view of the world. It doesn’t exist. It probably never will exist. But it’s one that they really feel very intensely about.”

Mainers have embraced third-party candidates. In 1992, while former President Bill Clinton carried the state, independent Ross Perot narrowly edged former President George H.W. Bush for second place with more than 200,000 votes.

The Green Party’s only state lawmaker in the country is Maine Rep. John Eder of Portland.