Goddess in Progress reminded me that I was planning on writing about SUPER TUESDAY!
I hate elections. I wish that each party just picked their own candidate to run for each position and then starting in February before the real election, they would make their announcement and start talking.
I really don’t want to listen to these people for nearly two years trying to win a four year position. I really don’t want all of that money flooding into campaign funds. I really don’t want all of the commercials. And I really don’t want all of the prerecorded phone calls begging me to vote for a candidate.
That being said, today is the big crazy primary voting day. I’m hoping to find time to sneak over during work for a couple minutes so I can avoid the crunch after work.
Did you remember to vote early and save yourself the hassle of waiting in lines? Are you skipping the primaries this year? Do you have a master plan to get counted multiple times with the new e-voting machines?
Here’s my big question of the day. If being a politician is such a hard time consuming job, how are full time politicians like Clinton and Obama (and their Republican counterparts) able to spend so much time campaigning for such a long period of time and still have time to do the job they were actually elected to do?
Maybe that has something to do with the current state of this country.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
While I dislike a lot of the hoopla of elections, I do LOVE elections. It is empowering. It is a way for the “little people” to make a difference. Most importantly, it is our “job”… our role in the government process.
I just wish that one of the jobs of the various parties was to determine which one best fit their beliefs and nominate that person. Asking people to commit to 18+ months of campaigning to get the nomination and then actually get elected just sours the whole process in my mind.
I would bet that the voter turnout would probably be a lot better if all of the campaigning started On August 1st 2008.
I don’t disagree that the length of the campaigns seems excessive, but I do think that voting in the primary is important. Parties change, and there really is no other effective way, IMO, to guage that change without a vote. If all campaigning started on 1 Aug, why not hold the primary on 1 Sept and the “real” vote in November. Or why not change the system so that the primary takes the top two candidates irreguardless of party in a “run-off” style system? Food for thought…
I’d be happy with those options. Anything that compressed the whole process into a couple months instead of a couple of years would get my support.
Maybe we should just get rid of the primaries, and let everybody vote for any of the candidates that would have been in the primary during the real election.
But then what would the news channels talk about all day….
I think that system would be similar to some other countries (Germany comes to mind…), but then you might run in to the problem of having a President that earned 5% of the vote… I think some countries get around that by having “sub-groups” join together to support one candidate in order have more than 50% of the vote (because it is required by their laws/constitutions). Hmm…
News channels could go back to reporting on how what Brittney ate for lunch caused temporary insanity and other fluff like that. Or maybe they could better cover world politics? Hmm…
If stupid people want to give money to a discombobulated system, then so be it. It does make the media outlets the number one beneficiary. However, the only true power is in the vote that I possess and cast(key word is cast). Many crybabies never vote. No regrets because I have voted is every election since 1974. That includes local elections and referendums. Let the games begin. I love you, dad.