I voted early today; stood in line for half an hour at a Home Depot surrounded by tawdry plastic Christmas decorations, but then what could possibly be more American than that? :)

It's funny, two years ago I felt much more political than I do now. Partially I think it might be fatigue, or media overload; I'm just tired of the whole farce, get it over with and move on to November 3 so we can all get on with the massive legal suits over an election that didn't turn out the way somebody wanted move on to whatever's next. Partially it's the not-entirely-faint feeling of disgusted uselessness the whole thing has this time around. I honestly don't like any of the candidates, on top of which I live in one of the states least likely to be considered any kind of an "undecided" state.

But mostly it's the feeling of exhaustion one gets when looking at the ballot. It's a strange combination of too many spots and not enough candidates--too many spots in that there's no way 90% of people (and I am included in that number) can make any kind of educated decision on the merits. Most people, I suspect, end up voting party lines or just randomly selecting on whatever criteria (voting for women, voting on names, trying to pick some "balance" of D vs R, whatever), which makes the whole human element fairly meaningless. Too few candidates in the sense that a third or more of the spots have a single candidate. Sure, you could write someone in (could you?), but what would be the point of that?

Eh, I went and made my choices, so here's hoping they make some kind of a difference, anyway.