As politically minded as I am, and as critical as I am of the current administration, folks seem to think it odd that I don't vote. My left-leaning friends are appalled - offended, even, that I would vocally champion a cause, but do nothing about it when it comes time to actually vote. They don't understand why I wouldn't try to influence politics with my given right to cast my ballot.

I'm all for influencing policy change on issues about which I feel strongly. I'm all about telling a politician exactly how I feel, and encouraging others to do the same. I do not, however, support the idea of voting people into office in order to create a majority vote among representatives - I think that doing so is playing the game of politics, and I'm not interested in that. The whole idea of "let's win this politician over to our side, in order to offset the vote of another politician" just perpetuates the horrors of our broken political system. I'm sick of it.

Furthermore, when electronic voting machines in Florida and Texas are rigged functioning improperly, causing the casting of a ballot one way to result in the vote for the oppositing political party, the whole system is just stupid. There's too much incentive for politicans to win the vote; the cynic in me can't take anything a politician says without feeling like it's a sales pitch, and every instance of "voting malfunction" has to be viewed as a fraudulant attempt to win more votes.

Bleah. Democracy.