Today, I am willing to make a prediction. Unlike most of the major news media who are reluctant to declare a victor in the presidential race before the pivotal month of October, I will stake my journalistic reputation on this pick. Are you ready? Drum roll, please. The winner is . not me, of Family Circus fame. In 2000, the leading vote getter among registered voters will be a blank ballot, representing the registered voter who didn’t actually vote. This will be a landslide victory since a blank ballot should earn over 500 electoral votes and be the first candidate to win every state. So, we have a winner. To what can we attribute this smashing political success? Much like Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton, the blank ballot won courtesy of feeble and uninteresting opponents: the replicant called Al Gore and the governor formerly known as Dubya. Voter apathy is growing. According to the Federal Election Commission, the percentage of registered voters who took the 10 minutes to vote in 1996 was 49.08 percent. Less than half of the registered voters of the United States turned out. That’s bad, but it only gets worse when the FEC informs you that only 74.4 percent of the eligible voting-age population was registered. With a little calculation, it becomes clear. 37.05 percent of the U.S. voting-age population voted, and it turns out President Clinton was re-elected because roughly 18 percent of the American population voted for him. Wow. There are Gallup polls that seem to encompass that many people. Unless the FEC does something to drastically change the election process, Not Me will be elected president. Once again, I have the solution, if they care to listen. Americans won’t vote unless they feel there is some urgent need to do so. So why not count those non-voters’ non-votes? Run a candidate for the non-voter party. Count every non-vote as two votes for the non-voter party, and take a vote from the non-voter party for every vote cast. Unless the candidate is awful, it wouldn’t work. That non-voter candidate needs to be someone so abhorrent that Americans will universally get out of their chairs to vote against that person specifically. Who should that person be? Kathie Lee Gifford. She recently left her show and husband Frank is too old to produce more spawn, so she needs something to fill her time. Rather than allow her to record more CDs, force her into the presidential limelight. The fear of a Giffordian presidency would do this nation good. Americans would become rabidly interested in the political arena and find themselves working together to find a candidate, just to avoid Kathie Lee. Just in case there are still a few apathetic voters in this country, Gifford needs a running mate. Martha Stewart. Though I would appreciate a foreign policy based on the export of lace doilies and hand towels, the idea of America’s official motto being changed to “It’s a good thing,” should instill fear in the electorate. Consider the impact. Male voters will turn out in droves, either on pure chauvinism or the common sense notion that living in a Gifford/Stewart era would be hell. Admittedly, Gore/Lieberman, Bush/Cheney, and Nader/LaDuke are all relatively unpleasant ideas for one reason or another, but comparably, our nation has the easiest choice of all time. Our solution is obvious, non-voters of America. Start voting or we start punishing you for allowing 18 percent of the country to decide who takes $200,000 off your tax dollars. Speak up even if it’s just to keep the national anthem from being changed to “If You Could See Me Now.” When it comes down to it, issues are less and less important. Lieberman’s judaism, Bush’s alcoholism, they’re minor issues. The major issue in this election will be sanity.