I don’t vote.

I have participated in an election before, but I don’t see myself doing it again anytime soon. I guess I don’t appreciate the rights that we have available to us in this country.

Big surprise, huh?

We have it screamed in our faces that we should get out and support our beliefs by voting. We have the power to change the world with a single check mark (or switch of a lever, depending on your style of voting). And everybody’s vote is significant, they all count, right?

Well, I have my own reasons for my boycott of the voting booth. It’s not just some anti-establishment/wanna-be rebellious trend I’ve decided to adopt. You may laugh at some of these reasons, but I’m actually quite serious about them. Or as serious as I can be, anyway.

First of all, I know as much about the people that run for president as the Carolina Panthers know about winning football games (read: nothing). I don’t know if it’s due to my laziness or if it’s due to the secretive lives that our political candidates maintain. But I don’t have a clue about the beliefs of our presidential hopefuls. So I turn to the most accessible form of information I know: The television.

All I managed to learn from the television is how terrible all of the candidates are, and why we shouldn’t elect them. I rarely heard a positive thing spoken about. In fact, some commercials would bash “Mr. X” (for example), completely tearing this man’s respectability to the ground. Then as the commercial was about to fade out, you would see “Paid for by the Mr. Y for president committee.”

I won’t waste my time voting on this mess. I don’t want to be held responsible for electing yet another back-stabbing crook that spews out lies as fast as his speech writer can articulate them.

In 1992, I did vote for president. I was not any wiser three years ago, so I went into that election voting for the candidate who seemed the “coolest.” As I sat there, looking at the candidates, and considering writing in my dad’s name (since he is the coolest guy out there, swear to God), I finally narrowed it down to Ross Perot and Bo Gritz. I chose the former, although Bo Gritz is probably the hippest name on the ballot.

As you have probably derived from this babble, I was correct saying I know nothing about politics. That’s why I never write about politics in my column, leaving that to people that know quite a bit about the subject. And it’s also why I won’t vote.

But I’m not just abstaining from presidential elections. Previous experiences with voting have only led to feelings of guilt and disappointment. So it’s over. But I still get the feeling that I’m alone. Let me point out some faults in voting.

First of all, I learned that people can misinterpret what they are voting for. When I was a sophomore in high school, I, along with all of the other sophomore boys in school, voted in our Homecoming Queen election. We all voted for the best-looking girl in the election. On the strength of the masculine sophomore vote, she went on to wear the crown at the football game that Friday night.

Being sophomores, we didn’t understand that the Homecoming Queen election was not a beauty contest. By the time we were juniors, we had grasped the concept that the Homecoming election was a popularity contest, not a beauty contest.

I’m sure we sophomores really pissed off all the popular seniors by voting for the wrong person. However, the fact that there is a wrong person in a Homecoming election is kind of pathetic. Isn’t it?

Second, elections don’t always solve everything. For example, the national championship in college football is decided by votes cast by reporters. Last year, Nebraska and Penn State both finished their seasons undefeated, putting up impressive wins week after week.

But a decision had to be made by the pollsters. In the end, Nebraska ended up getting the nod, leaving Penn State out in the cold. A raging debate among college football fans is which team really was the best last year.

You mean the election wasn’t concise? Of course not. The teams need to play each other at the end of the year to decide who the best team is. The opinions of members of the press do not distinguish who is better, not like a head-to-head battle on the gridiron would.

One final thing about elections is that you’ll always find some voters that are as dishonest as the candidates they vote for. Take me, for example. When VH-1 had a call-in poll for artist of the ’80s, I called in all afternoon, voting about 100 times for Duran Duran. Needless to say, I think I helped Duran Duran win that contest, although they might not have deserved to.

I’m starting to wonder if elections serve any purpose besides finding something new to bitch and complain about.

Actually, elections are a convenient way for people to feel like they have some sort of power in what goes on around them. It’s just too bad that most voters find themselves having to choose between the lesser of two evils.

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Christopher Clair is a senior in journalism mass communication from Waukon.