Why Bother?

By this time next week I will know who all my opponents will be for the November 8th election for Governor of New Hampshire.
When you get your ballot there will be a lot of names of people running for governor you won’t recognize, but you really won’t notice since you, like most everyone else, will only care about two of the names.
One will be the Republican candidate and the other will be the Democrat.
In fact, many of you could fill out your ballots today and just check the box of one of the parties since that will be really all that matters. The name really won’t matter much.
That’s just the way it is.
The other names on the ballot will be insignificant. A waste of paper almost. Still, they all have some reason to believe they can get the job done but since they aren’t either a Republican or a Democrat, they don’t stand a chance.
I have it even harder than all of them.
You see, being the candidate for governor for the Flatlander Party, my name won’t even be on the ballot to maybe be accidentally checked off by someone who thought they were voting for someone else, most likely the Republican or Democrat, but they checked the wrong box.
I have to count on the extra added burden of people not only filling in the box the reads “Write In” but then having to actually write in my name.
We all know in this day and age of short attention spans and a hurry to get back to our electronic devices, it is asking a lot of people to take those extra steps.
I would think that not being on the ballot doesn’t even make me a third party candidate, or even a fourth or fifth party one, so I realize my chances in winning are very slim.
Still, I’m committed to going the distance on this thing and still try to bring my message to the people (which I have almost completed. I’m just waiting to hear back from a couple of key powerful State House lobbyists).
My family and friends are very supportive, even though they are all voting for either the Republican or Democrat even though they don’t even know who they are yet.
Many people have told me they would like to vote for me but they can’t since “A vote for you would be a vote for the Republican/Democrat candidate” depending which way they lean politically.
I tell them that a vote for me would actually be…well…a vote for me, but it falls on deaf ears. If as many people were to vote for me as said they were going to vote for me, I could just win this thing, but everyone is afraid that if they don’t vote for the Republican (whoever that ends up being) it will only help the Democrat (whoever that ends up being) and vice versa.
I’ve even had people tell me that they would vote for me, but they’d rather just hold their nose and vote for someone else since they are the lesser of two evils of which one will definitely win since there will be a lot of people holding their noses to vote for one of the two they dislike the least while ignoring all of the other names on the ballot they know even less about than the candidate they are holding their nose for.
That’s how a democracy works.
It’s hard for me to understand why it is that most everyone wants a diverse selection to choose from when it comes to things like entertainment, beer, toilet paper and hair conditioner, but when it comes to people running for office, no one ever wants to try something new.
It’s like saying: “Why should I bother trying different brands when the ones I have been using for years and years and years continue to disappoint me?”
I guess all of us “other” candidates are hoping that someday people will wake up and try something new, so we will keep on trying,
For now, most voters will keep opening the same old box of cereal and find that the promised prize inside is really just another disappointment.
I am inviting all of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc, party candidates for a shindig at my house on election night. I have already paid the caterer and the band.
We don’t plan on watching the election results, we already know that either the Republican or Democrat will win. Instead we are going to have a Twister tournament and sing songs from the sixties and seventies.
The next morning we will wake up and see that nothing has changed at all.

www.BrendanTSmith.com