Idaho presidential ballot looks fun

October 2, 2012
By Mike Weland
Publisher

If you're an Idaho elector and you've already voted absentee for the November 6 presidential primary, good for you! you can skip this article and go back to what you were doing. If you haven't ... pay attention. You'll meet a few people you likely didn't know.

If you haven't been paying attention, Mitt and Barack aren't the only presidential candidates asking for your vote, though mainstream media hasn't told you that there are more people who would like to become Commander in Chief.

What's important isn't so much who those others are, but that they have qualified to have their names included on your ballot as candidate for this nation's highest office. What's inescapable is that, according to the mainstream media, votes for only two candidates will count.

The media, not the voters, have written the other qualified candidates off, not by vote of the people and for the people, but by strength of omission. To the media, it's a two candidate race. To the voters of Idaho, Mitt and Barack are being challenged by Ross, Virgil, Gary and Jill.

As a reporter, call me stupid, I don't believe that it's a journalist's job to tell you who to vote for. As a publisher of news, I think it irresponsible not to give equal credence to every candidate on the ballot. Perhaps I'm biased; but not one presidential candidate advertises here.

News Bonners Ferry isn't here to tell you how to vote. My job is to give you the best information I have, to share what I'm given, so that when you go to the polls, yours is a vote that counts for what you believe in.

Fair elections are decided that way.

It's late, and I'm tired ... I'll spend the next few days trying to get in touch with the losers the mainstream media has written off. They might have nothing to offer worth considering and certainly not worth our vote.

Then again, maybe this might be an election the people, and not the media, decides.

Doubt it.