I'm not sure whether it's optimism or mean-spiritedness that makes me wish that ballots listed the candidates in alphabetical order, with no indication of the party to which they belong.

The optimist in me says, "Perhaps that would spur people to actually research the candidates' positions and voting histories, rather than simply voting along party lines."

To which the mean-spirited bastard responds, "Oh, come off it. You know they'd just write down a list of their party's candidates and take it into the booth with them. But I agree; if people are so lazy that the last actual political decision they make concerns which party to join, voting should be made as difficult as possible. And quite frankly, if voters are too stupid to understand the ballots, to hell with them."

Of course, now that we (at least here in Flori-duh) have shiny new computerized voting machines, it would be theoretically possible to enable more informed voting. Any time a candidate with a political history is on the ballot, his or her name could be accompanied by a button that pops up a complete listing of the candidate's voting record, financial statements, campaign promises (and how many were actually kept), etc. (That'll never happen, of course, because incumbent politicians desperately depend on an uninformed voting public with a tragically short memory.)

Mr. Optimism would also like to see Presidents refrain from campaigning for others while they're in office. They're supposed to be leading the entire nation justly, not taking time away from their office to promote their own cronies. It was despicable when Clinton did it, and it's despicable when Bush is doing it.

Mr. Mean-Spirited Bastard replies: "What are you, a complete moron? Presidents, singers, movie stars... politicians need these people to convince the public to vote for them, because the pathetic sheep are more swayed by celebrity than by reason."

Ah, well. It doesn't really matter. There's less and less difference between the Democrats and the Republicans — they're both full of power-hungry opportunists who serve themselves first, their parties second, and the people last (if at all) — and the third parties will never become viable enough to make a lasting impact.

Parting words from Mr. Optimist: "Well, at least we won't have to suffer through any more political ads for a while!"