Two Weak Candidates

<>OK, so the election here in the U.S. is only a couple of day away, and in my opinion, it’s going to get ugly, but more on that later.

As for the title of this blog, well let’s take a look. If you have two strong candidates, it a heated election, but not as nasty. You get some negative campaigning, but not as much. In my opinion, voter turnout is lower. Fewer people are worried about the wrong candidate getting in office. And you clearly don’t get the outrage against the other candidate or party. When you have one strong candidate, it’s a no brainer. There is no questions as to who will win. One candidate will beat the other by 15-20% or more.
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Now to two weak candidates. What happens? There are in my opinion two tell tale signs. First of all, there is the sharp division of the public down political lines. And second of all, rather than people telling you who they are voting for, they tell you who they are not voting for. Don’t get me wrong. If you ask anyone who they are voting for (if they tell you) they will say who they are voting for. But as you talk to people, and as voting comes up, people talk more about the negatives of the one candidate they aren’t voting for. I think it pretty sad when one candidate’s positive attributes are expressed in the terms of the other candidate’s negative attributes.

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It’s a very important election, vote for the lesser of two evils. I have heard that comment time, and time again. Let’s look at the stupidity (and I think stupidity is an understatement) of the second part of that comment. So we are to vote for an evil person to run this country? Enough said? Don’t get me wrong, I think it is a very important election, and I think if you are eligible to vote, you should. But don’t vote for the wrong reasons. Go and vote your heart. I personally would love to see a significant amount of people go in, and say to themselves, neither of these guys are worth it. And vote for someone else. I would love to see the “other” column get a significant amount of votes. And no, this is not an endorsement of Nader, or any other Third party, except to say there are choices out there other than the two big ones. Don’t vote for one of the big two, just so you can say “I didn’t through my vote away”, or “Don’t blame me, I voted for the other guy.” Although you would definitely be able to say that if you voted for a Third party candidate.

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Now for the ugly part. Here in Ohio, a judge has blocked challenges by the GOP to thousands of voter registration. After looking into most of the challenges, they found that by far the majority of registrations were legit. Now I’m not saying that either side is right. But they fact that a legal challenge is being blocked, no matter how legitimate, simply invites a post election challenge of the results.

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<>I believe that Ohio will be this election years Florida.