I can’t vote. Even if I could vote, I wouldn’t. I mean, if I wanted to do something pointless, I’d probably try to get my cat and my dog to have babies. It isn’t going to happen, so why bother voting? Does each vote really make a difference anyway? It doesn’t seem like it, a lot of the time. I suppose it technically does make some difference. Just a really, really, infinitesimally smaller-than-fun-sized difference. We’ll just say that your vote doesn’t count. Nevertheless, you still have to do it right.

Why Vote?

Now let’s face it. When you turn eighteen, the world gets bigger. You can go to strip clubs, smoke cigarettes, and move out of your parents’ basement. The right to vote, that thing our founding fathers worked so hard to give us pretty much goes on unnoticed when we turn eighteen. That’s pretty much just because it’s boring and when you can smoke cigarettes and go to strip clubs you have better things to do than vote. Even so, if you don’t vote people won’t like you. And because being liked is the most important thing in the world, you have to vote.

People who vote will automatically think that they’re better than you if they find out that you don’t vote yourself. If you’ve been reading my last couple articles and following their perfectly laid out instructions, than you’re probably better than them, and they need to know that. If somebody asks you if you vote, you say yes. If they keep asking you questions, like asking you who you voted for, or where you voted, you have a couple of options. If you don’t like the person who is asking you, you can go ahead and tell them it’s a secret ballot and that they should go try and eat their own head or something. If it’s someone you want to impress (aka a girl), than tell them that you voted green. Chicks dig Ralph Nader. Believe me.

Vote Smart

When you get to your voting center, which very well may be a small, cramped room filled with people who look like raisins and smell like moth-balls, it’s just about time to enter the booth of eternal despair. Now, I’ve never seen the famed booth, also called the booth of lost souls, but I’ve heard stories. Terrible, terrible stories. Anyways, you step into this boothy thing, where you fill in the little bubbles on the ballot next to whichever name sounds the best to you. If you want to choose a bubble to fill in based on where you want this country to go, then honestly, why are you reading this article?

If I were voting, I’d write new names in the margin, with their own bubbles to fill in. If you want to go this way, try completely absolutely ridiculously funny names like “Turd Ferguson,” or “I.C. Weiner.” Beware, though, that writing in the margins and in doing so, basically making a mockery of what American democracy stands for might, void your ballot.

2008

The Presidential election in 2008 seems like a long time away, but when you’re having a good time, it seems like the terrible things that spoil your good times come around all the sooner. The election next year is one of those things. While there is a primary before the fall of ’08, it’s not hard to see who is going to be on the ballot next year. Everybody is talking about Hilary Clinton, who I guess is too good for first lady this time around, and Barack Obama, who’s gonna have a lot of trouble with that last name of his. I know that this seems great, like our country is becoming more diverse than ever with a woman and a black man running, but really folks…one of them reads from a card and the other was born without a soul and can’t laugh. Well, not for real anyway.

Those of you who will be able to vote in the 2008 election have important things to consider before your ballot is cast. Who has a cooler tie? Or in Hillary’s case, a power suit? Which candidate has the funniest accent? Should the leader of our country have good social and political ethics to go along with experience while somehow keeping up a youthful vigor? Wait…wait, no. That last one was all wrong. Pretend you didn’t hear that one. Regardless of how you pick your own special wannabe, just remember that the decision shouldn’t be hard enough so that you have to watch CNN or MSNBC or, heaven forbid, FOX News. Instead, watch something that attracted more voters in 2004 than the presidential election did, like American Idol. When you’re choosing whom you’re going to vote for, ask yourself who would be the better singer.

Stay Cool

You’ve cast your ballot, and helped steer your country in a new direction. Now, you have to wait and actually see if your vote won the election for your candidate. People tend to get all riled up over the Presidential Elections; they think that they’re important. I know, it’s ridiculous. Just don’t let yourself get involved with the hysteria. Stay cool, and, maybe, if you’re lucky you’ll be like me and forget whom you voted for. This would help make the suspenseful counting of ballots and crazy voting shenanigans that are going to happen so much easier.

When the election is over, act like you voted for who won. Even if you know you voted against them, act like they’re your favorite. If you lose some friends, or put off some people you know for it, it’s okay. You’ve probably gained ground with other people who voted “with you,” and now that your party is in power, you’re cooler than everybody that lost. Presidential Election shmesidential shmelection. It’s that simple, don’t stress and you’ll do fine.