Election: How NOT to get my vote

Election day is tomorrow, and I feel I must express how annoyed I've been with this campaign. In the Virginia gubernatorial (goobernotorious?) race, Jerry Kilgore has been spouting nothing but negativity, and has been autodialing my home phone numerous times with recorded messages (twice just yesterday, in fact).

I took another look at the TV commercials last night from Killgore and Tim Kaine.. Kaine talked about how he felt on issues, what he wants to do, etc. Killgore's ad was hardly recognizable as an ad for Killgore -- there were about 3 seconds at the beginning where he said he approved the ad -- then the rest was just a "NOT Kaine" ad, bashing Kaine on issues such as raising the gas tax (trying to play on the current hype about high gas prices, when really the taxes have not been the cause of the drastic price hikes we've seen in the past year), raising real estate taxes (during a period of unprecedented housing growth.. something's got to pay for widening EVERY road), and other tax-related issues.

Based on that ad alone, I would not think "I should vote for Killgore!", but rather, "I should not vote for Kaine". If there was a third-party candidate, Killgore's ad would tell me to vote for them... oh, cool, there actually is one: Russ Potts (I) I'll have to read up on him.

I consider myself a libertarian these days (little 'L'), believing mainly in small government and the personal responsibility and freeedom that goes with that. I used to be a card-carrying Libertarian, but their candidates seem to always be TOO RADICAL, with plans like:

On day one as president, I'll abolish the income tax and cancel welfare, social security, medicare, medicaid, etc. On day two, I'll legalize drugs and abortions. On day three, I'll open the U.S. borders to free immigration, and bring ALL of our troops back from other countries.

This type of candidate will never actually be elected (although I do tend to vote for them out of principle, to avoid supporting the Democrat or Republican candidates.. lesser of 3 evils.. plus it allows me to complain about whoever actually GETS elected, because I didn't vote for them!).

So, lately I've generally voted Republican, at least when third-party candidates were not available. I will NOT be voting for Jerry Killgore, though, because of his mud-slinging and auto-dialing campaign. I'd rather vote for the Democrat, or possibly the Independent (Russ Potts).

Oh yeah, now that I've read some more on the Russ Potts website, I remember when Potts was trying to be included in debates a couple months ago. Killgore was against allowing/inviting Potts to a televised debate, while Kaine and Potts participated in at least 10 other debates which Killgore refused to attend.

All the more reason NOT TO VOTE FOR KILLGORE. He might have had my vote by default, if he had just been a good sport and played fairly.