WHY I"M HOOKED ON VOTING...FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS

(Actually I'm voting for Ron Paul - the only true leader to come along in my lifetime. Viva la Revolucion!)

Hooked on voting
No contest — not even Tuesday’s election — is too meaningless for me to cast a ballot
By Carl Kozlowski

I vote every day, several times a day. And it’s not just because my dad was an immigrant from communist Poland, where no one was allowed to vote, and taught me to appreciate the opportunity to cast ballots in a free country.
I only think of my dad’s lessons in that regard every four years, when it comes time to vote my conscience on who should be the leader of the US and by extension, the free world. But most of the time I’m voting about whether I think Brit-Brit or K-Fed would be the better parent for their beleaguered tykes, or if I think “The Apprentice” should finally be canceled.
Yes, I vote in the polls offered by Web sites such as AOL, CNN and MSN — polls that ask utterly meaningless questions but yet give participants the strange satisfaction that they’re part of some grand decision-making, casting our judgments upon the boorish behavior of celebrities and politicians in a manner that would make Puritans proud.
And yet, as silly as it may seem, being among the 180,000 or so people who participate in a typical major-Web site online poll has made me question a few things about our current presidential elections. You might say I’m being trivial about the most important election we face, but then I say that the very primary process we’re engaged in — and especially the supposed “expert” pundits who constantly analyze each state’s votes — is what’s turning our democracy into a joke.
Just take a look at what’s happening here. We start each primary season with two states that no one ever thinks about outside of a presidential election: Iowa and New Hampshire. Hell, the only way I’d ever set foot in one of those states is if I got horribly lost (which, um, actually happened to me once in Iowa). But yet we put them first and have candidates waste an average of $200 per voter in an attempt to get that “all-important” first victory.
Only 5 percent of Iowa Republicans took part in the 2004 caucuses and 10 percent of Iowa Democrats. So if the people there don't care to participate, why are THEY being treated like prophets?
The second that someone like bass-playing Baptist minister and former governor of the worst state in America (I come from Arkansas so I can say that, thank you very much) Mike Huckabee wins Iowa, pundits breathlessly wonder whether the other six Republican candidates are dead in the water. How can they win?! Can they come back?! Huckabee’s got the momentum to take it all! they say.
That is, until five days later when he gets stomped by John McCain, a guy who would have dropped out of the race last summer if he listened to his low polls. So he becomes the unstoppable candidate that no one can possibly beat! Until, um, Michigan, where Mitt Romney and his magic underwear won a commanding victory on Tuesday.
The same goes for the Democrats, where Barack Obama was anointed as our next king for the five days between winning Iowa and losing New Hampshire to Hillary Clinton and her tears. And even more shocking (!!!), she won despite being down 13 points in the polls behind Obama the day before. Making a 16-point turnaround to win the election is such an odd occurrence that the Democratic Party’s official munchkin, Dennis Kucinich, has demanded a hand-vote recount.
Let’s just face it: Everyone’s a winner this year. At least, that’s the way Big Media wants it, because it makes the news “exciting” and “a horse race” where “all bets are off.” An easily decided race means that viewers will start paying more attention to “American Idol” than the American president. Never mind they already do.
What the pollsters don't take into account are these things:
Polls are crap. Unless you ask the SAME 508 people how they feel about candidates throughout the polling season, you'll always have differences in the results because it's always a different group of 508 people being asked. They might have had different opinions all along — meaning, if you seek out a different group each time, OF COURSE they'll have different answers, but there's no way of knowing how EACH group really changed their opinion from week to week. Ask the SAME group how they feel each time or don't bother at all.
And besides, I’ve never been asked once for my opinion in a supposedly representative presidential poll, nor has anyone I’ve ever known. Have you?
One thing that we can all be certain of, though, is that we’re going to be having “change.” Lots of change. Obama never explains what the hell that means, Hillary claims she can bring it despite the fact a victory for her would mean we’ve been ruled by a member of just two different families for more than two decades, and Edwards says he’s fighting for the people while living in a $25 million house.
The Republicans amazingly claim they’ll bring change, even though it’s their own leader who’s screwed everything up in the first place. The only thing that changes with Romney is his stand on the issues from state to state, while McCain says he’s bringing change, but that he’ll keep our troops in Iraq for “10,000 years” if he has to.
Huckabee is the rare Republican who loves raising taxes, so we’ll all be left with change rather than bills in our wallets, leaving Ron Paul to actually propose innovative ideas — like bringing our troops home — and getting labeled a crackpot for doing so.
The only thing that's clear is that nobody wanted Fred Thompson to be their president. I knew that he'd do poorly from the beginning because he looks like death warmed over. Now I’m just waiting for a "very special" episode of "Law and Order" any day now in which Thompson's character is magically back on the case.
In that case, I can see myself getting hooked on “Law and Order” again because I’m gonna need a new addiction. I’ve finally come to my senses and realized there’s really no one worth voting for in this election.
01-31-08