[Perndog]

Bush was elected not only by the Republicans and the non-voters, but by a lot of the third-party voters as well. When a liberal independent candidate is on the scene, he draws more voters from the Democrat side of things and thus weakens the Democratic candidate more than the Republican. There are occasional exceptions, but I think it's a better idea to pick the guy you *least* want to win and vote for the other major party, no matter how appealing those independents are, because there are too many strictly partisan voters for them to have a reasonable chance anyway.