I voted yesterday

I did early voting and without a wait in line, I voted. My presidential choice is...[his website]

Go on, check it out and see who I voted for. I will wait for you.

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Yep, I voted 3rd party this election. During the Republican Primary, I voted for Ron Paul. Earlier this year, Paul gave his endorsement to Baldwin and his Constitutional Party. I felt this was a good year to go outside the 2-party system.Let me say I don't agree with everything Baldwin stands for. As you can see from his Issues section, he is far more of an isolationist than I believe the US should be or for that matter can be at this point in our history. I am not keen on the UN, but we can't just get out of it without making matters far worse for the world and the US, if for no other reason than to keep our Security Council veto position and not give it up, as Russia learned in the Korean War. But, I am aligned with him on his pro-life stance, removing our troops from Iraq (it is time now and it costs too much!) and the Constitutional Party and Baldwin share a commitment to reduce our deficit and bring our spending under control. I would like for them to verbally state the way to reduce our debt and deficit, and I believe the only way to do this, of making cuts in Social Security, Medicare and defense spending. Everyone dances around this, but we are going to have to do it sometime because they make up the majority of our US government spending.

But just as important as Baldwin's positions, I believe the US desperately needs a 3rd party (or more parties) to break up the duopoly of the two major parties in government. Their yin-yang take on any political issue generates so much hate and animosity. I am so frustrated that I have to choose a candidate just because of his party affiliation even as the party becomes more diluted as it takes on more issues to support, many of which are taken just to be on the other side of what the other major party is taking.

Since I have started voting, I don't recall ever not voting for a Republican candidate, but McCain was a weak Republican candidate whom I don't feel confident in the sincerity of his views. I think Senator, and soon to be President, Obama is a poor choice so I was left with an opportunity to vote 3rd party.

For the other Tennessee-based elections, I applied my incumbent principal: unless there is a strong overriding reason, I vote against the incumbent. I support term-limits, and until they are made law, I will do my own term-limiting voting. For US Senate, Lamar Alexander (R) was running for re-election, and I voted for an independent candidate. Alexander is facing a Democratic candidate, but his is strongly favored to win. I also voted against US Rep. Bart Gordon, who was running against only one independent candidate.

For Tennessee Senate, it was a race between incumbent Diane Black (R) and just a Democratic challenger. I did not know anything about the challenger, so I wrote-in a candidate, my wife Shannon. She would be better than either one of them.

I did vote for an incumbent in the Tennessee House. And, he was a Democrat. Bob Bibb is a first term representative from my district. He has not been there long enough to have much of a record, but he claims to be conservative Democrat (pro-life, pro-marriage). But my overriding reason for voting for him was that his mother Marian Bibb goes to my church, and Shannon and I think much of her. You can learn something about a candidate by his momma. So for this year, he gets my vote. But if he wins and runs for re-election, I am voting against him. As an adendum to my incumbent principal, the overriding reason can only over ride once. Good luck Rep. Bibb. If it is up to me, you only have two more years to serve your state.