Indecision 2004...What a night

Well, my brain is becoming numb due to the coverage. I do have a couple serious thoughts on my mind though right now.

First, I would like to brag about my senior government class at Lineville-Clio. We ran an all-school election. The students created a registration form and registered students (grades 1-12) and faculty/staff. They also created a ballot, and created voting booths. Then today we ran our election. The other teachers were quite impressed and told me it was a lot of fun. The results in case you were wondering. Kerry won 42 to 38 over Bush. Nader did gain 5 votes (one of the teachers was campaigning for Nader inside my room, so I promptly kicked her out- no campaigning within 50 ft. of the voting place). The Libertarian party candidate also gained one vote. So a close election indeed.

Second, let's not forget that tonight we are also electing 1/3 of our Senators and all of our U.S. Representatives. What makes me sick is the length of campaigns. Kerry has now been running for about 2 years. First to get the nomination, then the actual campaign. Bush has been campaigning for about nine months or so. That is too long in my opinion when they have jobs to do, like make decisions and run the country. What is worse though is that if you are a U.S. Representative, you serve only a two year term. Which means you are elected, sworn in, do work for your constituents for about 6 months and then your first term is over with. Now your focus turns to your re-election bid. You still have a year and a half to serve, but they need to be re-elected, so issues are pushed to the side for campaigning! We need laws and regulations that say "campaigns can last no longer than 3 months" or something much shorter than it is now. Too much money is being spent on campaigns and too many important pieces of legislation are voted on just for re-election purposes or passed up because campaigning is too important.

Okay, there is my soapbox on what I hate about campaigns. I'm off it now.