“Who are you voting for?”

“Ralph Nader,” a young man replies. At this, a girl next to him starts to giggle, while the boy who asked looks at the young man with a bemused expression.

The question of who to vote for president on Tuesday, November 4, was not a particularly funny question; however, the answer “Ralph Nader” was not a particularly common answer. Votes for president were generally divided between those supporting the seventy-two year old Republican candidate, John McCain, and those supporting the African American Democratic candidate, Barack Obama.

With so much attention put on the democratic and republican candidates, the hoi polloi are often ignorant that other presidential candidates even exist. Yet for this 2008 presidential election, there were six candidates on the ballots of as many states from which is needed to win a majority in the U.S. Electoral College, plus sometimes even seven more minor candidates, depending on the state. These unknown candidates often come from unknown parties, such as the Green party, the Libertarian party, the Independent party, the Constitution party, and even the Boston Tea party (yes, that is not a joke).

One first time voter, Laura Wilkens, commented on her surprise at finding so many more options available to her than she had expected: “I looked at the ballot, and was like, ‘whoa, there’s six candidates; there’s not just democrats and republicans on here.’ The only non-democrat/republican candidate I had heard of was Ralph Nader. It actually made me stop and think. I wondered if maybe I should have looked into my other options before voting.”

The presence of so many unknown candidates was not only a shock for Wilkens, but for many of the first time voters casting their votes.