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Election fatigue, anyone?

Jim Bowen

Thinker
J
Joined
Sep 25, 2004
Messages
245
Being here in England, we only get the light version of news of the impending American election yet quite a few people here are getting a bit fed up of hearing about it. If some people here feel that way, just how many people in the States just want the election to be over and done with?

Jim Bowen
 
We get sick of hearing about your little princes, and that story's got decades left in it.
 
Cheers for depressing me, Hgc ;) , a lot of us here are also sick of hearing about our princes, too and as you say, they look set to carry on for a while yet. :)

Jim Bowen
 
Put it this way - I live in Ohio, the most hotly contested swing state in America. I see political ads in my sleep. It's unnerving.

"Kerry wants to kill everyone and reanimate their bodies. John Kerry - Necromancer! (I'm George W. Bush and I approved this message)"

"Bush wants to draft the sick elderly to fight a war against gays to work off the cost of their flu shots, and he's doing it by stealing oil from Iraq and selling it to China. George Bush - Cheney's sock puppet! (I'm John Kerry, and I approved this message)."
 
Naw. I live on the left coast. It's a given that this state will vote for Kerry and then break off into the ocean. Other than the nightly national news, I have to go looking for political stuff.

OTOH, I'm getting pretty tired of all the propositions on the ballot here. You'd think we didn't have a budget crisis in this state. Vote No on everything!
 
Arizona... letsee. Yeah I'm pretty sick of it. We're more of a threat to be a swing state in 2008. Republicans got it pretty well wrapped up and ought to just stay home and count cattle. No sense braving the snow and voting. :D

In addition to the presidential election we have a big fight in District 1 between a Republican guy named Renzi and a Democrat named Babbitt. Yes, from THE famous Babbitt family.
The biggest Democrat complaint about Renzi is that he seems to live in Virginia... and by the Republican ads, Babbitt is responsible for all evil in the region for the last 20 years.

So yeah I'm ready to have it over.

We will have reached bottom when we start discussing the effect of various weather systems on voting probability.
 
Well, if you're so sick of it, tell your friends to stop spamming Ohio voters to try to tell them to vote for Kerry. We didn't tell your people to go vote for John Major, did we?

And if you're so sick of it, what are you doing here? Kinda like saying you're sick of clowns and then buying circus tickets.
 
Well, we've had our election over and done with already. Nothing really changed, same faces in parliament, news reports to the contrary (It WASN'T a "landslide victory", just a slight percentage change. Really.)

*YAWN*

So come on, America! Vote in advance, and save time in November! You know the old maxim: Vote early, vote often!
 
Zep said:
So come on, America! Vote in advance, and save time in November! You know the old maxim: Vote early, vote often!
Click to expand...

This early voting stuff is only available in a few states. I had never even heard of it. It sounds dangerous: what if your candidate goes completely off his head, or something comes up between your vote and the election? I mean, it would take something pretty severe at this point for most people to change their intended vote, but it could happen...

1. Kerry says he plans to launch nuclear strikes on North Korea and ban sales of Hunt's brand ketchup, and revive the economy by banning paper money and going back to the gold standard.

2. Bush gives a press conference in drag and states that he's the second incarnation of Christ, here on a mission to save our souls through gospel music.

Not to mention the fun situation where a candidate actually dies right before the election. My sister's state once elected a dead man to office because he died before they could remove his name from the ballots.
 
TragicMonkey said:
1. Kerry says he plans to launch nuclear strikes on North Korea and ban sales of Hunt's brand ketchup, and revive the economy by banning paper money and going back to the gold standard.

2. Bush gives a press conference in drag and states that he's the second incarnation of Christ, here on a mission to save our souls through gospel music.
Click to expand...


Well, when I compare the chances of those things happening to the chances of

an electrical surge breaking all the electronic voting machines in my precinct,

a power outage shutting down the polls for the last few hours of election day,

someone hacking voting machines so poorly designed that vote totals can be manipulated with a five-line program,¹

then early voting seems quite desireable. Also, I don't think I'm alone when I say that either of those things would not change who I voted for.


.......................................
1) Computer Security expert Herbert Thompson found he could write a five-line script in the Notepad text editor that would change the vote summaries in GEMS without changing the raw precinct data. The auditing log in GEMS wouldn't record the change because it only tracks changes that occur within GEMS, not changes that occur on the computer outside of GEMS. After writing the script, Thompson saved it as a Visual Basic file (.vbs) and double-clicked it to execute it.
_
 
TragicMonkey said:
This early voting stuff is only available in a few states. I had never even heard of it. It sounds dangerous: what if your candidate goes completely off his head, or something comes up between your vote and the election? I mean, it would take something pretty severe at this point for most people to change their intended vote, but it could happen...
Click to expand...
Every state will allow absentee voting. My vote was required recieved by Nov 2nd.
 
ManfredVonRichthoffen said:
Every state will allow absentee voting. My vote was required recieved by Nov 2nd.
Click to expand...

But not every state allows absentee ballots just because you want them. Some require you to have a legitimate reason, like medical problems, or being away at college or something. (My first vote was absentee because I went to college out of state. To my disgust, I was practically the only student who bothered. And that was a presidential election, too.)
 
The early voting is all screwed up here.
Mostly long lines because of shorthanded election staff.

The major parties are holding voter registration drives, dropping off boxes of new registrants at a time. Even though they are required to register for either party it ain't happening. The state has already set up a phoneline for those who go to vote but can't. Since last election there is a law that makes them accept a 'provisional' ballot.

The chance of the election's outcome being indeterminate like last time is much more likely.

Yeah, poor Ohio. I already change the channel every time a political message comes on, must be hell there. With all the people out of work they have more time to watch the political ads about how great things are.
 
I am sick of the election only because I work for a company that handles voter registration software for a good chunk of Nevada and the election means that things are frantic here and my bosses are tense.

Other than that, it doesn't bother me. The mudslinging and demonization of the other side (whichever side the 'other side' happens to be;) ) is kind of annoying but that's become a constant thing, it's not just for election years anymore.
 
BPSCG "And if you're so sick of it, what are you doing here? Kinda like saying you're sick of clowns and then buying circus tickets."

Now THATS funny HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I hope you used it as a metaphor , because it seems to describe some behavior here.
hehehe circus.
 
BPSCG said:

And if you're so sick of it, what are you doing here? Kinda like saying you're sick of clowns and then buying circus tickets.
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Not especially. Asking if anyone else is a bit fed up of it all, as the people in the States must be getting all of the election stuff in spades. I guess the only part of your statement that chimes is the bit about clowns, but that can be said of most elections.

Jim Bowen
 
TragicMonkey said:
But not every state allows absentee ballots just because you want them. Some require you to have a legitimate reason, like medical problems, or being away at college or something. (My first vote was absentee because I went to college out of state. To my disgust, I was practically the only student who bothered. And that was a presidential election, too.)
Click to expand...
What'll make you really mad is when you find out that they don't always count your absentee vote. If the difference in votes between candidates is greater than the total number of absentee, some states won't count it.

I want my damn vote counted even if it isn't possibly going to make a difference.
 
varwoche said:
Election fatigue, yes, but it pales next to reality fatigue.
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I'm not sick of it. It's a little like watching professional wrestling. The refs are there, to be sure, but they are powerless to stop either actor...er...candidate when misdeeds are occuring. They always seem to be looking the other way when really serious infractions take place -- like the obligatory folding chair attack or tossing the other guy over the top rope onto the concrete apron. What's best is that this time they actually made it legal for third parties to enter the ring and help one side smash the other with a 30-gallon metal garbage can.

I suppose if you take it too seriously, like my grandmother did with wrestling, then you could get fatigued after a while. If you stop to just appreciate the athlete it takes to do this kind of stuff, day in and day out, practically non-stop, you generally find renewed respect for them, even if they are the bad guy.
 
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