Informed Voters

Ok, two of my electoral pet peeves are candidates who quit and the uninformed voter.

These two peeves are showing nicely in recent primary results.

I was looking at Wisconsin's primary results. Yes, all the precincts aren't in yet, but some things are obvious.

And not just that Senators Obama and McCain have won.

If you watch the tickers at the bottom of the news channels, you may (thought probably won't) notice that the percentages for each side's top two doesn't add up to 100%. Why is that?

Because of the previously mentioned convergence of Candidate Quitters and the Uninformed Voter.

For the Democrats, let's proudly congratulate each one of the following voters for either believing so strongly in their candidate of choice that they could care less that they don't have the backbone and stamina to see a campaign through OR are so uninformed that they don't know that their candidate has quit (with 81% of the precincts reporting):

• 5,359 votes for Mr. Edwards
• 2,070 votes for Rep. Kucinich
• 679 votes for Sen. Biden (been out a LOOOONG time)
• 416 votes for Gov. Richardson
• 400 votes for Sen. Dodd
• 382 votes for Mr. Gravel

That's nearly 10,000 voters on the Democrat side who as surely voted for their candidate as if they'd voted for Bugs Bunny (in my book, comparably as qualified as some of those other names.) Of some comfort is that these folks only comprised 1% of the voters casting votes.

And the Republicans were not immune (with 81% of precincts reporting):

• 15,021 for Rep. Paul (technically, he's not quit, nor suspended his campaign - however, he HAS emailed his supporters and said he's focusing on his Congressional race)
• 6,222 for Mr. Romney
• 2,185 for Mr. Thompson
• 1,687 for Mr. Guiliani
• 684 for Rep. Hunter
• 150 for Rep. Tancredo

That's 25,949 for the Republicans. Frighteningly enough, that's 7.9% who voted for non-candidates.

Sigh.

Come on, people...