I wasn’t going to vote for Obama.  I also wasn’t going to vote for Romney.  I also wasn’t going to vote for a third party candidate.  I was going to happily leave the entry for President blank when filling out my ballot.

I live in a very safe blue state.  The chances of Obama loosing my state were nil.  If there was even a shadow of a doubt that Obama would lose the state, I would have gladly filled in his box and slept well.  Like so many other things in my life, I had the luxury of voicing a silent protest without any of the dangers that my protest might bring.

So why wasn’t I going to vote for Obama?  It mostly boils down to the awful state of our country’s civil rights.  Government intrusion in our lives is even higher now than it was during the Bush years.  The Patriot Act still exists.  The Department of Homeland Security Theater still exists.  Then, on the international front, there’s illegal drone wars and targeted assassinations of U.S. citizens.  Despite all the absolutely awesome things that Obama has done in his first term, these are not the hallmarks of a president that deserves a second term.

Then the first debate happened.  Despite what the pundits almost universally say, I don’t think Obama did that bad.  He certainly “lost”, whatever the hell that means in the non-debate format that we call our presidential debates, but it was Romney’s complete 180 that had me completely flabbergasted.  I couldn’t believe that everybody was more concerned with Obama’s lackluster performance than Romney’s ultimate pandering.  Romney’s performance scared me.  I thought that this man needed to not only lose, but be buried by as large a number as possible.

The trend, if anything, got worse as the final days of the campaign wore down.  The second two debates were more of the same from Romney.  The speeches Romney started giving started containing more and more bald faced lies about Obama.  There was also the matter of everything I dislike about Obama, Romney wanted to either keep status quo or supersize.

So I voted for Obama.  President Obama is a strange character.  He has done more to advance civil rights than any president since Johnson, while at the same time exercising powers that restrict a lot of civil rights.  I hope in his second term the former stays while the latter goes.  I don’t know if I can say I’m happy with Obama winning, but I am at least content.

Check this out.  It’s a graphic of all possible ways to win for both candidates.  I won’t vouch for its completeness, but it’s interesting that Romney only has one path to victory if he doesn’t win Florida.  Also, it looks cool.

I always get this little thrill on Election Day.  I usually vote in the early evening.  That way I can get a feel for the participation rate.  When you sign your name to get your ballot, there is usually a sequential number on the sheet you sign.  That’s how many people have voted before you.  The election judges usually know about how many people are on the voting roll.  The last primary, I voted at around 6 PM and I was the 33rd person to vote out of a possible 2,000 or so.  *sigh*  I guess I should have titled this post “I love the smell of non-participatory democracy.”  It will be interesting to see if we can top 50% participation this time around.

I also try to ignore election news as much as possible during the day because it is a fetid sore of human puss oozing over every non-story that it can get its slimy hands on.  Once the returns start rolling in, I am glued to the TV until the winners are announced or I fall asleep.  Good times.

All that to say, go vote!  The main reason why voter ID laws are even a thing is because so few participate in the process.  If the participation rate was close to 100%, it would be much more difficult for voter ID proponents to attempt to disenfranchise legitimate voters.

If I had any creative talent whatsoever, I would write a parody song about Mitt Romney set to Eminem’s song “The Real Slim Shady”.  And boy, would it be awful.  In my decade or so of following politics, I have never seen a politician who tried to be all things to all people as much as Mitt Romney has.  To call Mr. Romney a panderer would be insulting to panderers everywhere.  Like almost everything Republicans do these days, he takes it to its own different plane of pandering.  At least with most pandering politicians, you can usually get a decent feel for what they actually believe.  As a prominent Romney operative said in the best gaffe of the election (which is when a politician accidentally tells the truth), Romney etch-a-sketches his beliefs so often there is no center to grab hold of.

The beauty of this strategy is that supporters can just say, “But both sides do it!”  And of course, they’d be right.  Because Barack Obama once talked all black-like to a black audience.  This is the equivalent of me throwing a rock at you and you emptying a clip into me and then arguing that what I did is just as bad as what you did.  There are levels of wrong and while I wish one party would just not do wrong, I’m certainly not going to support a party that raises the wrongness stakes and then pleads false-equivalence.

On this date in 1872, Susan B. Anthony voted and was later convicted of voting illegally.  So you see, voter fraud is an enormous problem and the only solution is passing laws that prevent as many people from voting as possible without looking like complete douchebags.  You understand, right?