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Picking the President

I read a post over at Jesse Ruderman’s blog on how he calculated that one could win the Presidential election with only 21% of the popular vote. His article is somewhat dense with technical terms, at least for the casual reader, but I think it would be an interesting read for anyone.

Jesse’s article got me thinking about frustrating this whole election thing is. Even after reading news articles, blog entries, fact check websites, websites from any of the parties, watching numerous TV ads, listening to various radio ads… I am still one of those annoying undecided voters. So many people around me have long-standing affiliations with the Republican and Democratic parties, and they all seem to know who they want to vote for. I have people trying to convince me of who I should vote for - my mother is on her local committe to re-elect George W. Bush, and she tries to convince me to vote for him nearly every time I talk to her on the phone. Somehow, I got on the Ohio Republican Party’s phone and mailing lists, and I’ve received “calls” from George W. Bush himself, as well as Laura Bush and Rudy Giuliani, all asking me to vote Republican, paid for by the Ohio GOP (I was registered as a Republican in Ohio, but I certainly didn’t have the foresight to give them the number I have here in Beverly eight years in the future. Mom promises me that she did not give them my information…). Then there’s the fact that the popular vote in Massachusetts has swung overwhelmingly in favor of Democratic candidates in the past three elections (it wasn’t always so unbalanced). The candidates spend next to nothing campaigning in Massachusetts because it’s such a Democratic gimme.

I don’t feel that either Bush or Kerry is a preferable choice. After reading about both of them, hearing and seeing them on TV, and doing research, I’m disappointed in both of them, and I’m not any less disappointed in one than I am in the other. I’m certainly not going to vote for Kerry just because he’s from Massachusetts, or because he’s an intellectual, or because he was a decorated Vietnam vet. I’m not going to vote for Bush just because he’s a Christian, or because he’s down-to-earth, or because he ousted Saddam Hussein. I’m going to vote for someone who I like as a whole person, and I don’t like either one of them.

I’ve looked at other parties’ candidates, and I’ve been thinking about voting for one of them. Supporters of the major parties tell me that a vote for a third party is a wasted vote. That may be true at this point, but if people don’t start to get interested in parties other than the big two, a multi-party system is never going to take off. I’d rather vote for the person who most closely supported my beliefs than for a person who I thought had the best chance of being elected, yet held very few of my beliefs.

Out of the third parties I’ve checked out, the Libertarians seem most palatable to me - and I score right in the middle of the Libertarian zone on the World’s Smallest Political Quiz. The Libertarians have one or two viewpoints I don’t necessarily agree with, but I certainly agree with them more consistently than I do with either the Republican or Democratic parties, and definitely on the issues that are most important to me. But then again, I haven’t done that much research into the Libertarians, and I definitely don’t know their candidate as well as I know (or think I know) Kerry and Bush.

So here I sit, still undecided. I’ve got just about 24 hours left to decide. You’re welcome to try and sway my opinion by leaving a comment, but of course I make no guarantees.