Undecided Voters

Once or twice a year, SNL still manages to get it right.

This morning's Washington Post Express carried this AP article. You've probably heard about--if you don't remember from every other general election of your lifetime--the importance of undecideds to politicians. Undecideds get a lot of attention this time of year from media and politicians because they are incapable of making up their minds. Or are playing coy. Or are lying to us. Or are dumb. Occam's razor allows for any of these.

I explained last week that I get how non-political people can be turned off to what little they do see of the campaign. The lies and the spin are tough to sift through, even for people--like myself--who follow the horse-race day in, day out. And this year--more than most--seems custom-designed to turn stomachs. Not to mention that the decision shouldn't be taken lightly and some people don't have the time to sit down, etc. I get all that.

But.

Mitt Romney officially launched his campaign on June 2, 2011. That's one way to measure the chronology of the campaign. You could also pick the day Obama announced his re-election bid (April 4, 2011). Some might go with May 11, 2011, the day a bloated, self-serving troll threw his over-sized hat into the ring. A cynical observer might pick the end of the 2010 midterms. And though traditionally the conventions mark the start of the general election, it would be more accurate to say that the general began when Mittens locked up the necessary delegates on May 29th of this year. No matter how one marks the calendar, voters have already had between four and eighteen months to come to a general decision. And yet undecideds cannot or will not figure it out for themselves. They don't want to be rushed, or they want to wait for "all the facts."

First: how many other life decisions require twenty months of reflection? And how does such a person function in every day life? Do they stand in front of the break room vending machine for seven hours, muttering, "Snickers or Milky Way? Snickers... or Milky Way? I just... I need more information. I can't tell them apart."

Second: the facts, such as they are, are out there. You can hem and haw about the vagaries of campaign promises and the natural dishonesty of politicians. However, uncontrollable world events aside, there's nothing coming in the next seven weeks that we don't already know--in large part because of those intentionally vague campaigns that will squelch anything that might damage their chances of winning. Also, those uncontrollable world events are ever-present possibilities. If something earth-shattering happens on November 7th and we're suddenly queasy about our choice: tough shit (unless the electoral college balks, but one messy situation at a time).

By the way, a decision doesn't mean a commitment. If it comes out tomorrow that Obama has used his office to personally select interns for the annual slaughter so that he might bathe in the blood of virgins to keep him ever-young, he's lost my vote. Some will claim that I'm in the tank for Obama. Or that I'm that repelled by Romney. The point is that--aside from more interest (and more time) than the average voter--I don't have access to any more resources than any one else. If, like myself, you largely use the Internet for news, your sources are equally as good as--and equally as bad as--mine. And I've made my decision based upon that same information that you have access to. If that same information turns sour, I can decide to jump off the bandwagon. Because that's the way human judgment works: you operate on the information you have and reserve the right to adapt when and if that information changes. If Drudge unveils evidence of Obama Bathory, I'll reassess my support. And few reasonable people would think less of me for it.

I could let all of this go if the undecideds had no interest in voting. That's a legitimate choice in American politics; it's not a choice I agree with and I think that not voting as a protest vote is as milquetoast as a protest can be, but it is a person's right. No, the problem here is that these people believe that it's important that they vote, regardless. Check out some of the undecided voter in Oregon:

“There’s a lot of people who have their minds made up too far in advance.”

Yep, our bad. We're the idiots. All 93% of us.

This is the aggravating part: the belief in civics that they sanctimoniously parrot while also refusing to engage in citizenship. Again, this election, for all intents and purposes, has been running for over a year. If you've accidentally picked up a newspaper or half-watched any news programming in the last few months, you've seen something having to do with the campaign. At some point, as the information rolls in, most minds will tend to pick a preferred candidate, even unconsciously. Not the undecideds, though. No, no. They need more. You can practically hear the SNL sketch: "some of us are just a little bit harder to please."

And so they'll get more. The bases are shored up and the informed independents have largely chosen sides. For Romney to come from behind or for Obama to clinch this thing, they have to appeal to the low-information, disinterested undecideds. And then we'll all get to hear those people vacillate back and forth for the next six weeks. Because why pick a side when everyone will bend over backward to hear your opinion? Do you know how much effort some of us put into opinion-shaping with little to no results to show for it?

Maybe they are smarter than we are.

EDIT: I shortened the original title of this post. It seemed edgy and attention-grabbing at the time. Two years later, I'm just kind of embarrassed by it. If you liked the previous one better, thank you. But that's not who I want to be anymore.