Just your daily reminder that the two-party system blows:

like-the-brightest-star:

Here in Ohio, we’re voting for our state auditor today. Now, we have 3 choices here:

1. A current state representative who is a law school grad with 8 years of state senate experience under his belt. As far as I can tell, no experience in finances or auditing.

2. Another law school grad with 5 years of congressional experience under his belt. Hasn’t been anywhere near politics for the past 7 years. Again, no easily visible experience in finances/auditing.

3. A 32-year accounting and auditing veteran who also worked as an adjunct professor after getting his masters(in finance). In addition to being totally qualified, also seems like a nice guy: does a lot of community services, tutoring, and coaching in his spare time.

Seems like a total wash, right? Candidate 3 seems astronomically more qualified than Candidates 1 & 2. Here’s the problem though: Candidates 1 & 2 are Republican and Democrat respectively. “Who cares? Candidate 3 still seems infinitely more qualified than either of them: he’s definitely going to win right?” Yeah… none of our local news groups are even talking about Candidate 3- or his credentials- because he’s 3rd party.

All of this isn’t even touching on all the discussions we could have about qualified candidates of any party being ignored because of their party affiliation: plenty of moderate candidates- with excellent credentials- that aren’t going to win because they aren’t “hard-line” enough to get their party’s support.