Message from a Non-Voter

The conventions are over, the debates are through, and the final stretch is on. In just under a week, Americans throughout the United States will be taking to the polls to vote on the person to take the place of the departing president; George W. Bush. I've followed the candidates since their first announcements of their intentions to run for president. I saw the successes and the failures. I pulled my support behind Republican candidate, Former Senator Fred Thompson. After his epic failure at campaigning, I began supporting Senator John McCain. My only problem was I was supporting the John McCain that ran against then governor George W. Bush in 2000. Since that time, John McCain has become a sock puppet for the neo-cons of the Republican party that has lost the traditional foundations of the Republican party and turned to the "moral police," larger government, out of control spending, wars that never should have started and setting aside the Constitution to fit the agendas of what the neo-cons believe the Bible says. After my revelation of Senator McCain's shift to the right, I began looking at my other options.

I briefly became a supporter of the Libertarian candidate, Bob Barr, as I have seen myself becoming more Libertarian as time goes on. I found myself having difficulty supporting Former Representative Barr for president, as he was only a Republican in Libertarian shoes. He too held many of the beliefs the neo-cons themselves had. He was also caught flip flopping over gay marriage just two days before he accepted the nomination for president earlier this year.

After Senator Obama's choice in a running mate was announced as Delaware Senator, Joe Biden, I was becoming enthusiastic of the Democratic ticket. I enjoy Joe Biden's snarkiness, and his sense of humor. I failed to look at his policies. During the Democratic National Convention, I became even more energized by Senator Obama. Senator Obama blew it out of the park with his acceptance speech. I set aside my differences with Senator Obama on taxes, health care and foreign policy to support Obama/Biden. They preached change, and I bought into it. I figured the change would be a stark contrast to the failed administration of the George W. Bush years. I failed to see the larger picture.

As time has gone on, the presidential candidates have defined their plans if the American people give them the opportunity to occupy the Oval Office. Although I like the idea of having more money in my pocket under the President Barack Obama administration, I do not believe in his Peter Pan plan of taking from the rich and giving to the less fortunate. Democrats want us to believe that Obama's plan is not a theory straight out of Karl Marx's playbook, but redistribution of wealth is an ideal held by socialism. We take more money from the rich who already pay a majority of the taxes in the United States to put more money into the pockets of those that don't make as much and to those that already don't pay taxes. Senator Obama himself has called this redistributing the wealth. He mentioned the Constitution ought to have an amendment that defines wealth redistribution while he was a state senator in Illinois in 2001. He recently reiterated his point when he was talking to the now infamous, Joe the Plumber. While explaining his tax plan to Joe the Plumber, Senator Obama said we needed to spread the wealth around. A socialistic principle!

Health care has become a major problem the American people, including myself have had to face. We need health care reform, but neither Senator Obama nor Senator McCain seem to have the answer to the problem. Senator Obama wants to inject the federal government into our health care. Although Senator Obama makes good points, such as creating more competition in the health industry, bringing costs down and allowing the importation of prescription drugs from countries such as Canada, he fails to understand the cost and negative impacts of creating a quasi-universal health care type system. I believe in the expansion of S-CHIP, Medicaide and Medicare, but Obama's plan is too extreme for me. Universal health care may look great on paper, but when implemented has many snags that can cost lives and cost extra money. Hawaii attempted a universal health care system for children of their state similar to Obama's plans, but had to scrap the plan several months after its implementation due to costs and abuses in the system. If we look at other countries that have universal health care, the citizens' tax rates are much higher than ours, their quality of health care is less, there are long lines to have surgeries done, even emergency or urgent surgeries and doctors' lines are ever increasing. Government makes everything complicated and to create another beaurocracy that can impact my health and well-being is not something I want to gamble on.

Senator McCain's health care plan would tax our health benefits for the first time in history. He also wants to give a $5,000 tax credit to us in order to purchase health care. $5,000 is not a reasonable amount for people to receive the necessary health care in this growing world. Although it is a step in the right direction, it definitely does not answer a lot of the problems we are facing in the health care system. It fails to address competition and bringing the cost of health care back down to a reasonable rate.

The first decision any presidential candidate has after wrapping up the nomination of their respective parties is to choose a vice presidential candidate. As Senator Obama chose a good running mate in Senator Joe Biden, Senator McCain failed miserably at his choice in Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin. Senator Obama has been attacked for his weakness in foreign policy experience. He picked up on this weakness and calmed the nerves of some of the uncertain people by choosing an experienced foreign policy expert. Senator McCain's weakness has been known to be in the economy. Former Governor Mitt Romney would have rounded out the Republican ticket quite well with his extensive experience with economic issues. Unfortunately for McCain, he chose an inexperienced governor with no foreign policy experience and unable to grasp the needs of the American people. Through interviews, Governor Palin has shown her inability to grasp a concept and form it into words that a person can understand. Never leaving the United States beyond vacations to Mexico, and giving the Saturday Night Live writers vacations by writing the material used in skits on the show during interviews, speeches and debates that show her inability to fulfill the office of vice president, let alone the possibility of presidency was a major blow to the Republican ticket, and the prime reason I cannot vote for Senator McCain and Governor Sarah Palin for president and vice president.

A final point I want to make on my inability to vote for Senator Obama is his affiliations with questionable people. While a community organizer in Chicago, Senator Obama bought a house, but not without the help of slumlord and federally convicted felon Tony Rezko. What type of relationship did these two have? Barack Obama called Trinity United Church of Christ his church for 20 years. A church known for its black liberation theology and controversial pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, I have to wonder what impact this has on Obama's ideals of the world, of racism and of America. I know if I belonged to a church that says, "God Damn America," after the worst tragedy in American history, and calling America a terrorist network, I would immediately disavow my membership in the congregation and not attempt to cover it up as Senator Obama has done during the election. Another questionable figure is unrepentant domestic terrorist and founder of the terrorist organization Weather Underground which was responsible for bombing buildings in the 1960s and 70s. Senator Obama once again has not been clear about what his relationship with Ayers was and still is. My intent of bringing up Bill Ayers is not an attempt to connect Obama with the actions of Ayers in the 60s and 70s, but to bring to light that Senator Obama has dealings with a former terrorist and believer in communism. Under no circumstances would I ever consider being friends with a former Al-Qaeda member. The final person I want to know more about is Senator Obama's connections with former PLO member; another terrorist organization, Rashid Khalidi. The LA Times is hiding something here, and it is to benefit the election of Senator Obama. I want to know the full extent of the relationships Senator Obama has had with these people before I could consider voting for him. A person can call this mudslinging from the right, but it is completely fair game to bring up the associations a man wanting to hold the highest office in the United States has and demand answers. If it comes out that his relationships were nothing, than so be it, but I want to know before I punch the Barack Obama box on Tuesday.

A final reason I do not support Senator Obama for the presidency of the United States is because he is known as the most liberal person in the senate and voted with his party 98% of the time, which hardly screams bipartisan to me.

I could go on for several more hours, I am sure, about things I cannot support in regards to Senator McCain and Senator Obama, but I will end it there as my purpose of writing this is to explain a bit more my choice to not vote for a presidential candidate.

Now, I explained why I cannot support Former Representative Bob Barr for president, I will briefly explain the final person I would consider voting for; the Constitutional Party candidate, Chuck Baldwin. Simply put, it is extremely difficult to find anything Chuck Baldwin stands for. Nearly half the things he stands for are not shown anywhere and it is hard to see if that is where he truly stands on the issues that are known.

All other candidates are too far to the left for me.

Many people have told me to write in a candidate if none of the other candidates fit what I want in a president, but writing someone in is not as simple in Missouri as writing someone in. They have to be filed as a write-in candidate, and if they are not, the vote does not count. So, in other words, I am wasting my time and practically NOT voting if I just write someone in.

People claim voting is our right, which I agree with, it is a right. They tell me to vote a third party candidate to "protest" the two main candidates, but as I have outlined here, I do not support any third party candidate and I am not going to vote for someone simply to vote. I prefer to be an informed voter than to go into something simply to vote. It's the candidates' jobs to persuade me to vote for them. If none of them do it, then what is the purpose of me voting for them? I think it speaks much more volumes to the campaigns if you "stay at home" the day of the election than to vote for a third party candidate. If Missouri had 1,000,000 voters and only 750,000 voters vote, it might make the Democratic and Republican parties look at why the 250,000 voters did not show up. They will be less concerned with looking at why people voted for the third party candidates and more concerned with why people stayed home. To me, not voting for president is much more of a protest than voting for a third party candidate. I am letting my voice be heard through my non-vote.

Not voting simply to not vote is much different than not voting because you can't support any of the candidates running. This isn't about me looking for someone to vote for that I agree with 100%, because I know it will never happen, unless of course I run for president. It's about agreeing with a candidate on the most important of issues, and this time around, none of the candidates and I agree on the most important issues.

I will have every right just as much as a voter to complain if something goes wrong during the next presidency as I didn't vote for that candidate because I don't support them and I let my voice be heard by not voting. And for those that say I don't have a right to complain, I guess when the candidate you vote for is elected and something goes wrong, or something happens you don't agree with, you have no right to complain either. And I can guarantee if you try to silence me because I didn't vote, I will hold you to that exact standard if your candidate makes it into office. Hopefully in 2012 I will have enough confidence in the incumbent to vote for them, or there will be a candidate on the other side that I believe will make a good president.