My last one is my voter registration. I can't change it because we are within X number of days until a primary. Afterwards, then yes I will.

And I can still vote for a third party candidate, which I probably will. Given how blue my state is, it won't make much of a difference.

Of course, you could vote for the Libertarians.  Their candidate this year doesn't impress me, however, it would still make sense to vote for him if your objective is to register your disapproval of both the Democratic and Republican candidates.  There is something to be said for shaking up the complacent, two-party system of the US.

Although you can also write in someone else, if you want to, somewhat pointlessly since no write-in candidate is going to win the election.

I kind of enjoyed the feeling of going to bed and not feeling like a slimeball for voting for some schmuck I also didn't like.

- derumi (del-me)
"Bobby Fischer? Man, that guy is crazy!" - Mike Tyson

I achieved the same result by simply declining to vote for President in the last two national cycles. Oh, I went to the polls and voted in all contested local and state races plus the ballot initiatives, but I simply did not mark a choice for President. Fortunately my county's voting machines seemed to be perfectly ok with that.

This year, though, it looks like I'm going to be forced into making a "lesser of two evils" choice. I do not think John McCain will make a very good president, but with all the retro Cold War saber rattling coming from Moscow, I do not believe we can afford to let a rookie get his on-the-job training staring down Vlad the Impaler. Plus as I have stated many times before, Obama's idea of "change" almost always costs people like me the most money.

{Insert amusing quotation here}

I do not believe we can afford to let a rookie get his on-the-job training staring down Vlad the Impaler.

I agree...we need someone who can stare into Vlad's soul

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

I didn't vote for him either, as I think I pretty explicitly stated.

{Insert amusing quotation here}

Didn't say ya did

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

"with all the retro Cold War saber rattling coming from Moscow"

I find McCain's saber rattling more disturbing thann Moscow's. His unfounded bellicosity toward Russia is deeply disturbing.

Huh?

Are you referring to his call to boot Russia from the G-8?

Steve for some reason you seem to project this field around you that renders both my sarcasm and irony meters inoperative. :)

{Insert amusing quotation here}

I'm being serious. McCain has long been making belligerant statements about Russia. I have no idea why.  

After the Georgia/Russia dustup he writes an op-ed claiming "We are all Georgians now," and I think he means it.

I find these stances demented.  

Yeah but even that was about him (McCain) urging Bush not to attend the St. Petersburg G-8 meeting. Still doesn't exactly come up to the standards of that Russian general who threatened to nuke Poland last week. I think McCain would definitely play diplomatic hardball with Putin, but I've still seen nothing that makes me think of Barry Goldwater... or Dr. Strangelove.

As to the "we are all Georgians now" statement, I read that as simply a presidential candidate playing to his hawkish base.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone accuse McCain of being an extremist on any issue.

{Insert amusing quotation here}

I do believe that no voter should feel obligated to vote for someone they actually don't like, merely to avoid voting for someone whom they do not expect to be able to win.  The beauty of the proportional representation system of election (which exists in many countries but not in the US) is there is a tremendously greater chance that your vote will count, even if you are not voting with the majority.  But even with the winner-take-all system, dissenting votes do make a statement.  The winner will still know that some portion of the electorate voted against him or her.

The winner will still know that some portion of the electorate voted against him or her.

It may be that George W. Bush's knowledge that he was elected to office in 2000 with fewer votes than his opponent did not in any way influence his actions as President.  What would Bush have done had he won with a landslide?  Possibly, he would have done exactly the same things.  (I could also speculate that with greater evidence of public support, he might have moved ahead with his plan for a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage.)  There is no way to know this for certain.  However, the margin of victory or defeat has certainly influenced other people, even if it hasn't influenced Bush.  Parties that are only narrowly defeated are more encouraged about their future chances than they would be if their defeat had been more crushing.  A political party has to have a certain level of support to continue to be taken seriously.  Many people have criticized Ralph Nader for even running for office, not because they disagree with his policies or objectives, but merely because he is not going to win, and therefore he is just drawing votes away from other people who do have a chance of winning.  That is why your vote for a given party has some meaning, even if the party you vote for does not win the election.

It's close in the sense of the Price is RIght, where they have to guess the price of the grandfather clock, and one guy says $200, and the other guy says $201, and the other guy wins because the actual retail price is $4500.

Huh?

Do you mean the perceived value is far from reality, for ...who..?!?

Am I a great person? Hell no - by most metrics I'm pretty much an asshole. -TSlothrop

I think McCain is the grandfather clock.

A fair point.  But I'll still take an experienced presidential candidate over an inexperienced presidential candidate.

True, McCain does have previous experience with being a Presidential candidate.