Voting

I'm from the school of thought that if you don't vote, you have no right to complain about the election result. No vote is a vote for apathy; a write-in says I care enough to vote and could have voted for your candidate if you'd offered a better one. A write-in sends a very different message to the people who run the political parties, in my opinion. If "none of the above" got more than half the vote, it would show that someone other than a Republocrat or a Demoplican could have won, and maybe someone else will step up. Both major parties feel to me as though they've been hijacked by their extremists (the Republicans more so) and aren't really serving the majority of the voting public.


I'm more than a little mystified at how some people choose who they're going to vote for. I'm personally willing to do a certain amount of research, but admittedly not as much as some other people. I don't understand people who always vote for one particular party, or based on one particular issue, or just because someone "seems like such a nice man". I've actually heard that one as the sole reason a woman I know voted for a candidate for president of the U.S. It suggests that the voter doesn't consider the decision as worthy of any real amount of thought. Please, folks, really think about your vote. It really does matter who is in charge, and one vote can make a difference, because a couple of thousand people who don't think they make a difference may have, if they'd voted.


As for this year's presidential election, I'm still undecided to an extent. I'm not voting for McCain; the question is whether I vote for Obama or vote for an independent candidate (likely Bob Barr). I find it interesting that both major candidates undercut their own argument against their opponent in their choice of VP. McCain's VP candidate is under qualified and Obama's VP candidate is very much part of the political establishment. It doesn't give me a lot of faith in either one. Conventional political wisdom is that the VP choice doesn't matter, but it matters to me in this case. I could live with Biden as president if need be; I believe Palin would be downright dangerous as president (even worse than George W.), and considering McCain's age and health, that alone is a big reason for me not to vote for that ticket.


Both major candidates for president seem to believe that a big honkin' government program of some kind is the solution to the problems facing this country, and I couldn't disagree more. There are situations where government must step in, but I think those situations must be carefully chosen. Government should stay out of the lives of people as much as possible and consider what incentives can be given to private interests to serve the public interests when it can. I'm not hearing that philosophy from either of them (except from McCain, to a slight extent).


I like Obama's apparent thoughtfulness and calm, but I'm not altogether convinced that that thoughtfulness is real. I hear a lot of talk about change, and not very many satisfactory answers regarding exactly what he plans to change and how. Some of the specifics I do hear I find disturbing.


I strongly dislike McCain's very negative and occasionally intentionally misleading campaign. When a candidate spends more time telling me why I shouldn't vote for his opponent than why I should vote for him, it suggests a lack of ideas.


I know that conventional wisdom in American politics is that it doesn't pay for candidates to get too far into specifics because most of the public supposedly can't follow the logic of the arguments. The philosophy is to keep things simple because most people won't understand it and will end up voting for the other guy they can understand. Does anyone else find this disturbing? I personally would honestly prefer to be educated so I can make an intelligent choice rather than trying to sift through emotionally charged and often misleading sound bites looking for substance.