Have you voted yet?

I'm rather sick of hearing this. I know they are well-intentioned, but it just sounds wrong to me hearing this before election day.

I recognize the value of early voting and absentee, especially absentee. For many people, such as active soldiers and the sick or elderly, those are the only ways they'd be able to vote. But me? I don't need it and don't want it. In fact, I believe that if someone can vote on election day, they should not vote early.

Why not? Revelation! No, not the Bible book. Instead I mean the stuff you hear later on.

For example, I was really leaning toward Mark Kirk for Illinois Senate. I'm usually a Democrat and he's a Republican, but from what I'd heard of him at debates he seemed like a reasonable guy and the Democratic candidate didn't seem all that inspiring. I could have voted early for Kirk. Now I'm glad I didn't, as more information comes out about him getting mixed up with Karl Rove and the usual tactics of voter intimidation disguised as anti-fraud action. Bullshit, I say. More real voters are driven away than fake voters, meaning a net loss. I still think Kirk is a decent guy, but he's making bad friends and I'm not eager to see how much they can corrupt him.

Still, him winning wouldn't be the ed of the world, not by a long shot. At least he's not Brady. I swear, the man is a walking stereotype: an anti-government creationist. I can't stand people like that. Smaller government? Sure, it definitely needs a lot of streamlining and cleaning up. Teaching that science isn't the absolute truth? Sure, that's part of how science defines itself: always falsifiable. But this bullshit of just wiping out jobs and thinking that will balance the budget in the long term (it won't, since education in particular is the one biggest driver of long-term wage and economic growth, in other words the sources of tax revenues), combined with sneaking religion into schools through creationism or intelligent design, that's just unacceptable.

Maybe our campaigns are too long, but ironically, I don't think cutting them short is a solution.