Not since Nixon running for re-election

Only read (okay, skimmed) 150 of these comments. Wow, folks. Enthuse much?

I posted the following over on PoliNation. http://bit.ly/myvotes Figured, why just link or restate when I can cut'n'paste! (Lucky y'all.)

GOOD MORNING! Didn't make it to the polling place before 7am after all, but we were in the first less-than-twenty.

1972, Nixon running for re-election. I wasn't 21, but they had given me the vote. I was living in Little Rock and voted absentee. I asked my Republican campaigning aunt for advice on the candidates and she, of course, only said vote straight Republican party. There was no third-party candidate on my ballot then, IIRC. I was not happy with Dick and how his "secret plan to end Viet Nam" had gone, among other things. I sure wasn't pro-McGovern. But in my state, certain things are sure, like a Republican win for Nixon 1972. So I voted for McGovern just to be a tiny protest against Nixon's failures.

In the ensuing decades, I voted many times like that, as frequently as I could for the Libertarian Party candidate, partly on small-L libertarian principles, partly so a viable third party could stay on the state ballot (although they lost that privilege years ago), partly to protest the two major parties, even if I favored one of them. I've probably voted "against" far more often than I've voted for. *cough* McCain *cough.* With rare exceptions, I've been able to say, don't blame me, I voted for the other guy.

Even though I once voted for the woman who said the government had planted a radio chip in her head, I do take the vote deadly seriously. Always, always, we looked at the individual candidates as closely as time permitted. I've voted for Democrats when the Republican was just too incompetent-seeming.

This year, for the first time for either of us, both the mrs and I voted straight-party. I hope Aunt Pat is looking down from Heaven and smiling that, after four decades, I've finally taken her advice.

As Wild Bill says, God bless America, again.
http://youtu.be/TfWIxRrvFy8