Deletion of Andre Barnett

Comment: If we are going to Redirect/Merge this, a move that I as the nominator am agreeable to, it should be redirected to Reform Party of the United States#2012 presidential candidates given that he is already listed there. Not to mention that the current standard for United States presidential election, 2012 is to list only candidates that meet the |notability threshold and have a stand-alone WP article. I am in agreement with Valenciano's reasoning for not lowering the notability threshold for all presidential candidates. I have no problem with a "lowest of all possible barriers for inclusion" for candidates who become the official nominee of a notable party (however obscure) or for independent/non-affliated candidates who attain ballot status in multiple states in the general election. In fact, this appears to be the existing de facto policy per longstanding consensus. However, consider there are http://www.fec.gov/press/press2011/presidential_form2nm.shtml 350+ declared candidates in the 2012 race, and such a figure is typical in recent election cycles. If we were to have an article for every candidate that (at best) had only a small handful of articles written about their campaign in relatively obscure sources (and that had no evident claim(s) to notability outside thier candidacy), we would easily have hundreds - and eventually more than 1,000 - articles on candidates who were either (for lack of better terminology) one-shot also-rans or perennial candidates who never managed to be so much as a blip on the radar screen of reliable sources. Certainly this would defeat the purpose of having notability standards. In Barnett's case, he has http://rochester.ynn.com/content/575800/local-tea-party-hold-caucus/?ap=1&MP4 only one reliable secondary source in which he is given "significant coverage" (and just barely at that) and http://www.kxan.com/dpps/news/strange/so-you-want-to-run-for-president-just-sign-here-ob11-jpe_3976714 another in which he is given only brief mention in two sentences. The other citations are primary sources or blogs. He clearly does not meet the crieria of either  or . That said, in light of the fact that his candidacy is recognized by the Reform Party and has received minimal coverage, redirecting as suggested would seem a fair and reasonable alternative to deletion
Stance: comment
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:N||WP:BIO||WP:POLITICIAN)

Comment: to United States presidential election, 2012. I'm afraid I have to disagree with Cullen and Carrite and, in fact, would say that their keep votes have no basis in policy. I would be strongly opposed to US Presidential candidates having any special treatment or lower notability threshold. Ah, but you might say, the US Presidential election is the most important one in the electoral calendar. Well probably, but it's for that very reason that candidates for President don't need any special treatment. It's precisely because the election is so important that we don't need anything other than . The importance of the election means that there will be far more written about it than other elections. As a result there will already be thousands of English language sources dealing with the election. If in all those sources, there is not enough to scrape together an independent biography, then we can say with near certainty that the candidate is not at this time notable. That situation may change later in the year and for that reason I'd go for a redirect, so that the article can easily be recreated if the subject does meet notability criteria later
Stance: merge
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:GNG)