Vote or be impotent

Oh…my…god. It has been one wigged-out campaign. Am I the only guy who has found himself distracted from his real life as he watched the dueling initiatives, courtly aggravations and political bloodlettings? I’m exhausted. I now know enough about the uselessness of polls, the aggressiveness of parties, and the ubiquitousness of political dirty tricks to last a lifetime.

If it is true, as my young friends told me at the Zephyr Bar on Friday, that this election was enough to get them motivated to participate in the political process, then all the divisiveness will have been worth it. We’ll have a real crop of reformers when these folks are on their second and third elections.

As I type this, it’s Oct. 26. One week until the General Election. I still have no idea who is going to win the presidency. Part of the problem is that without study, I can’t always spot the biases in the media I read. I don’t usually want to put that much work into it. It seems to me that it’s a big part of the reason that so many reporters are considered untrustworthy: You can’t tell when they are offering their honest, informed opinion because they hide behind a fake wall of objectivity.

I’ve also noticed that the reports I’ve seen on TV and read in the paper haven’t seemed to reflect my world. In the last few weeks, I kept running into people who said they were undecided, including my own Republican dad. So if this election came down, as the media outlets continuously said, to 6 or 7 percentage points of undecideds, how come I kept running into them?

I don’t know. The national media has had Nevada firmly in the Bush camp in most of the polls, but that doesn’t feel right to me. As I said, too many mixed signals to make a call. So, here we go. By the time you next read this editor’s note, I could be living in a whole new world.

Reason to vote No. 50: Voting heightens the anticipation as you watch the election returns on TV. It’s like having a bet on the World Series.