Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Totally Uncommitted

When I went to vote this morning, I was surprised to see that one of the choices for President was Uncommitted. I don't recall ever seeing an option like that on an election ballot before. Given that the only things that was on the ballot today in Rhode Island were the Presidential nomination and the delegates to the conventions, I'm not sure why anyone who didn't want to cast a vote for any of the candidates would even bother showing up. Perhaps it's on the ballot to give people the ability to cast a protest vote if they don't like any of the candidates.

2 comments:

Michael David Smith said...

It actually used to be quite common for "uncommitted" to get large vote totals. As recently as 1992, "uncommitted" came in second place in the Iowa Caucus (with four times as many votes as eventual nominee Bill Clinton), and in 1976, "uncommitted" won the Iowa Caucus. Basically, if you vote "uncommitted," you're just saying that you want the nominee to be chosen at the convention, rather than prior to the convention.

So whom did you vote for?

Unknown said...

Interesting. This was only the second presidential primary I've ever voted in, so I must not have noticed last time. Since RI randomly orders the choices on the ballot, Uncommitted was the top choice on the Democratic ballot this year, so that may be why I took note of it this time.

As for my vote, I went with Hillary. I kept bouncing back and forth and actually woke up Tuesday morning thinking that I was going to vote for Obama, but in the end, I decided that she was probably a better candidate.