voting... here?

Since this was right around the corner, I figured I'd better check out my options.

Only to discover that my options were genuinely terrible and I may as well stay home. There aren't any issues on the ballot except local ones like property tax rates for schools. And other than maybe the judges on the state ballot (who I may have to look at some decisions for), there aren't candidates that I was at all excited by any of their ideas in order to vote for them. Indeed, I would be quite satisfied to vote against almost everyone running, from both parties and from the generally laughable Libertarian Party to boot. In fact, there, most of them were on the do not disturb list. The straight jacket wing of the party seems to be taking over.

I'm debating either staying home or casting a ballot randomly. It was that bad.

What brought this on was seeing some campaign literature being put out listing a number of issues, most of which I do not care about. Since the literature was generated by a right-wing Evangelical group, most of it I'd probably be on the other side politically anyway even if I did care about it. But I concluded that since it was October, I should probably do some research and that was my "starting point".

Given that the election is supposedly about budgets, and given that nobody running has announced any ideas how to do anything with that, they simply claim magical budget balancing or running abilities without a firm plan to stand on and evaluate their claims, that's a problem. Next, given that the Ohio election seems strangely and considerably structured on repealing or not enforcing the health care law as passed, I'd like to hear an alternative before we start blowing it up. Not that I'd mind if it was repealed in part or in full, but it didn't actually do anything either to the status quo that demands a repeal from me (I also think that repeal is so marginal a possibility through the legislature that it's not even worth talking about). I'd guess there's the ongoing issues of immigration reform and civil liberties abuses/counter-terrorism abuses, err.. policies, but given that nobody running in the liberal side of the equation in this state for a national office was willing to give any of that a whirl, it's not even an issue. Because everyone was busy trying to out tough each other. Even on immigration, everyone wanted a damned fence or some such. I think I saw one guy running for Congress who had a decent sounding anti-terrorism look see, though it wasn't exactly fleshed out with civil liberties protections so much as a plan for dealing with the foreign policy angles that looked almost sensible. Maybe there's some people running who are modestly pro-gay rights (repeal DADT, extension of state benefits to domestic partners, nobody here appears to be running with gay marriage as legally equal), but that's not enough for me to overlook greater flaws in their economic or other social policies.

So overall, ugh. And fuck it.