Steve Skojec

Those of you who are regular readers know my family and I have moved twice in 2008. First, we moved from Ashburn to Manassas. Then, we moved from Manassas to Falls Church.

Each time we’ve moved, it’s represented a change in county, and probably a change in congressional district as well. Each time we’ve gotten settled, we’ve requested a change of address from the DMV for our licenses, and simultaneously have taken advantage of the option to register to vote at our new address.

Only the voter registration changes never went through, unbeknownst to us.

Last week, I called to check on my registration status when I couldn’t find it online. I was told I’m still registered at my Ashburn address, where I haven’t lived since February.

Today, trying to continue the followup, I called Loudoun County (where Ashburn is located) only to be told that

a) The DMV routinely screws this up

b) I may not technically be eligible to vote at all, but that if I do vote, I have to bring my change of address form to my old polling place - now about 25 miles away from where I live - and tell them I only just moved recently.

But aside from the fact that I really don’t want to try to make that drive on a work day, there’s another problem: I’ve been living in another county for six months, even prior to our latest (and hopefully last, for a while) move. I can’t honestly tell them that I only “just moved” when in fact I didn’t. I’ve been out of Loudoun county for 8 months.

The only thing I can think of to do is to request an absentee ballot for ONLY the Presidential race and hope that I get it in time. Add to that the fact that I’m so exceptionally unexcited about my choices for President, and I’m beginning to wonder what the point is.

Of course, when I watch videos like this, I’m tempted to make a vote under protest, despite my long-standing opposition to supporting either candidate:

So what’s a guy to do, when he’s in this situation? I disagree with McCain on Medical Cannibalism (another form of abortion, for those of you who continue to insist he’s “pro-life”  rather than “less pro-abortion than the alternative”) the war in Iraq, foreign policy positions on Iran and Russa, Immigration, the bailout, etc. I think he lacks the character necessary to exercise good leadership, that his choice of Palin as VP was a cynical tactic to get my vote, and that his recent admission that “life begins at conception” at the Saddleback Forum was not only an inexplicable contradiction of his previous statements on Roe but is indicative of how scary his position on ESCR really is - since he believes that those embryos whose destruction he would fund are real, living human beings.

I am furious to find myself in this position - a position where I must vote for the single-most unqualified, unacceptable GOP candidate of my lifetime or I face the possibility of feeling complicit in the virtually certain (regardless of what I do) rise to power of the most frightening Democratic candidate in this country’s history, one who will almost certainly entrench the “right” to murder unborn children through his cooperation with legislation and his choices for the Supreme Court, which will have at least one vacancy in the next few years.

And even if I did cast a vote for McCain, wallowing in self-loathing and recrimination for my complicity all the while, he is likely to be overwhelmed by a democratic supermajority (making his veto power irrelevant) and his judicial selections will be gambles because, as we well know, any justice who shows the slightest evidence of belief that Roe should be overturned will never, ever be confirmed.  (Which is why I find the acclamations of Alito and Roberts as “pro-life justices” bizarre; they may be, but if we really knew that for certain they wouldn’t have survived the nomination process.)

This election is, to borrow a phrase which became popular with the bailout package, a giant crap sandwich - and I am really not wanting to take a bite.