The End of Election Season

Am I ever glad that election day has come and gone.

All of the talking heads and advertisements were really getting on my nerves. Especially the past couple of weeks. Yesterday I said that if there was a runoff in our Senate election, and if that meant I have to see the advertisement with David Vitter's premature babies one more time, I would yank out my own tongue and strangle myself with it. Vitter won, sparing me the horrible decision of having to watch that commercial any more or to take my own life in a most horrifying and painful manner.

In case you're recalling my previous post about Vitter, he did win without the benefit of my vote. I can't say that I'm too broken up about it. He's not awful, and had there been a runoff, I certainly would have picked him over Chris John, who finished behind him.

I'm not nuts about the result of the presidential election, but I wouldn't have been nuts about it had it gone the other way either. On election day, I passed a bunch of poncho-clad volunteers waving Kerry signs at a busy intersection. I can't imagine the candidate that would get me that excited. I wish one of them would. It would be nice to feel like you were potentially close to having a great leader. Oh well.

While I'm on the topic of elections, I should share the two things that I would do to change how we have elections.

First, I would start all elections like Louisiana does -- an open primary with all of the candidates in one pool, regardless of party affiliation. Then -- unlike Louisiana -- I would allow each voter to cast one vote for as many of the candidates as he likes. So, if you adamantly support one candidate, you would just give your vote to him. If you absolutely hate one guy, you vote once for everybody but him.

I think this method would give the rational people the power to weed out the nuts. The problem with our current system is that a few normal candidates split the vote enough that we have to pick between two terrible candidates with high nut-case followings. Recall the Louisiana governor election where we had to pick between a former KKK honcho and a known criminal.

I know this seems like a messed up system, but think about it. It's beauty will dawn on you.

The other change I would make is that for any ballot that is a race between people for an office (as opposed to propositions or amendments or things like that), I would include an option for, "I don't want to elect any of these people." Votes to that wouldn't really count in any way, but they would be tallied and reported to the media. There are many, many, many elections where I wished I could push this particular button.