Election Day

It's finally here, Election Day, and I am not near as excited about voting as I should be. As proud Americans, the right to vote in a free election is something we should cherish, it's something we try to spread around to other countries but I'm not sure why we want to subject them to this.

During the entire election we have only heard about the two candidates running for president, Obama and McCain. Can you name any of the other five candidates on the ballot? Yesterday I was online for quite a while looking at the issues and I took a five of those candidate compatibility tests. Only one of those test even gave me an option other than McCain or Obama, on that test my candidate was Charles Baldwin of the Constitution Party. The other four tests went 3-1 for Obama but only with around a 53-46% difference. Just like the polls show.

The problem here is that we are really only allowed to vote for the Democrat or the Republican since the electoral college won't allow any other candidate to win. Besides the fact that the smaller candidates (who have some good ideas) don't have the money to spend. This election, more than $5 billion was spent on presidential, gubernatorial and senate races. If the candidates all spent the same amount, the races would be a lot different and there would be more than two choices.

Watch the headlines today and listen to the news stories. They'll all say the same thing, "Obama and McCain await the verdict" The other candidates have been discarded before the election even began. Abraham Lincoln said in his Gettysburg address that we should be "dedicated to the great task...that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. " But I think it's to late. Yes, government is of the people (with the means and money), by the people (in the electoral college) and for the people (who have contributed largely to the campaigns), but not for the rest of us.

With all this in my head, I'm going to head off to my polling place and get my ballot. I'll stand in the little cardboard booth and pick someone. They say that voting for anyone is not throwing your vote away but the way the media is playing it, if you pick anyone other than the top two you are, and they would like it to be Obama. I'm sure that at 7:30 am somebody has already called Obama the winner. I'll decide when I get there.