My campaign slogan:

“Vote for me. I’ll leave you alone!”

My problem with voting this year (and most years) is that the Doctrine & Covenants indicates that God has commanded us to select good, honest, and wise men to be our leaders. That pretty much disqualifies both McCain and Obama. Obama, being the empty-suit totalitarian collectivist that he is, would clearly be the most detrimental, but McCain is not that much closer to a true defender of the Founding Principles. (As a resident of southern Arizona, I have suffered under that putz for long enough. I wonder if Johnny Mac would like to take a tour with me to see what our porous southern border has done for Tucson.)

If I vote FOR somebody instead of AGAINST someone, I’ll end up writing in my own name…again.

The 2004 election began as a referendum on Bush, but as you note, ended up as a referendum on Kerry. The Kerry campaign did some dumb things to make that happen.

I don’t know if there was any way to avoid the 1980 election being a referendum on Carter. He had such a spectacular series of problems that it simply couldn’t be avoided by the end of his first term.

What general elections measure poorly is intensity. Each voter gets a single vote. But each voter has a level of intensity as well.

Maybe they hate candidate A at a level 7 out of 10, but only dislike candidate B at a level of 2. Or maybe they like candidate A at a level of 10. But their vote is of equal value to the guy that only likes candidate A at level 1. Some of the intensity is perhaps measured by apathy (people that choose not to vote), but that hardly tells the whole story.

Automatic runoff voting is interesting, but studies show that most people won’t buy it because of the complexity involved. The outcome is not always clear to understand. I’m not sure there is a good mechanism for having intensity reflected in voting outcomes, nor am I certain that Americans would even think that individuals’ passion should help determine elections.