Eh, screw it.

The title refers to me talking about politics again.

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This whole election thing is less than a week away, and I’ve thought of doing something drastic unusual eh… just something.

Not voting.

That’s right — I’m considering making the active choice not to participate in this election.

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When people attempt to persuade others to vote, their focus is usually on getting people who are too dumb or lazy to vote to get learned up and/or motivated enough to do so.

I’m guessing that’s because the majority of non-voters aren’t intentional non-voters.

The pro-voting persuasionists don’t really seem to try to convert the intentional non-voters. Are there any other intentional non-voters?

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I’m undecided.

Yes: less than one week away from the election, I’m still undecided about whose box I’d like to check.

The more I hear, the more I read, and the more I watch, the less convinced I am about any candidate.

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Of the two major party candidates, I’m about 80 percent certain I don’t want to vote for one. And I’m 100 percent certain I don’t want to vote for the other.

I don’t like voting for “the lesser of two evils.”

I do believe in voting for “third” parties.

I hate when people tell me that by voting for a non-major party, I am essentially casting a vote for one of the two major party candidates. I understand what they’re saying, but they only see it that way because they’re fortunate enough to like one of the major parties, or one of the major party candidates enough to vote for one.

(i.e.: If I disagree with a Republican’s point of view and vote for a Libertarian instead, that doesn’t mean I’m voting for the Democrat. I’m simply voting for the Libertarian. Nothing more. If I disagree with a Democrat’s point of view and vote for a Green Party candidate instead, that doesn’t mean I’m voting for the Republican. I’m simply voting for the Green Partier. Nothing more.)

Yet, I’ve still not found a non-major party ticket I like enough to want to vote for.

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I think presidential candidates shouldn’t have running mates; the candidate who finishes second should assume the role of vice president.

As a control to prevent attempts from the vice president’s party to attempt to remove the president from office so the VP can take over, the VP should only assume the role of president temporarily if something happens to the president while an emergency public vote is held to fill the remainder of the president’s term. After that, the VP would go back to being the VP.

I have some ideas on how the rest of the control process would play out, but I’ll spare you anything other than those basics.

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For some I do, but for a lot of candidates, I don’t put in enough effort to really learn them and their platform A-Z.

Voting is serious business.

I appreciate the civic duty, but I don’t relish it, and I don’t like that it feels like a job unto itself.

Maybe that makes me unworthy of voting anyway?

I also believe a lot of voters don’t know and/or understand as much as 70 percent of who/what they’re voting for, but believe in, like, one or two issues strongly enough to vote in favor of those issues’ supporting candidate.

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Here comes some criticism, scowls, and/or people just dismissing me outright: I often tend to think that the role the president plays in our country’s government is overstated.

Yeah, he does stuff — and plays an important role — but this isn’t a monarchy. The president’s not the King of America.

There are other factors and players at work. Some we know about. Some we don’t. I’m just guessing, really, but what I do know is that every election year, people act as though the person we put into office is given four years of authoritarian powers and no other branches or governmental checks and balances exist — oh, except for when there might be the need for a new Supreme Court judge during the president/authoritarian ruler’s term. Then it matters because judges apparently don’t use their oversight to interpret the law as it was written, but rather to insert their beliefs into it. And those judges’ beliefs will, of course, jive with the new president’s.

There are more ways for citizens to participate in the governing process than to simply vote, yet all we tend to do is vote, wait for something we don’t like, and then complain.

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I don’t know where I stand on every single issue the candidates support or disagree with. Oh, there are issues I have opinions on (and some are fairly strong), but there are some I just don’t know what I believe.

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I took a few online quizzes about “the issues” that matched me up with candidates who believed what I believed. The quizzes yielded wildly different results.

What I ultimately determined was I can agree with one candidate on eight out of 10 issues, but on the two we disagree on, they bear equal weight to the eight we agree on.

The quizzes didn’t take that into consideration, and, thus, didn’t help.

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This was me rambling aimlessly about why I may not vote.

I’ll hope you excuse my doing so.

~ by joshlos on October 29, 2008.