CAN THE FREAKING ELECTION BE OVER YET?

So the Presidential Election is tomorrow, and I can't wait for this whole thing to be over.  Basically, I feel like this little girl.

This blog post isn't to promote Barack Obama, or Mitt Romney, and I don't plan to do any bashing.  So don't run away.  I'm not going to pretend that I know much about politics, because I don't.  And even if I did, my two-cents wouldn't hold much merit.  I'm just a college students who grew up in OHIO. 

So I should be excited shouldn't I?  My vote actually means something, since Ohio is a swing state with 18 substantial electoral votes.  My vote could decide the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Sure, that's exciting and all, but mostly I'm just frustrated.  SO MUCH FRUSTRATION. 

First off, in order to register to vote when you live out of state, you have to send the application through the mail. But seriously, what decade are we in?? I strongly suggest an online application.  And because of this, I have a confession to make.  I will not be voting tomorrow because once I planned to register to vote, I realized it wouldn't make it from Utah to Ohio in time.  Yes, I won't be voting because I'm I was too lazy to register earlier, but can you blame me?  I'm from a generation that doesn't plan ahead for things like snail mail.

I was annoyed that registering was so inconvenient, but I was also relieved.  I had no idea who I'd vote for anyway.  Considering my conservative upbringing, my fairly conservative faith, and the fact that Mitt Romney is a Mormon, you can probably guess who I'd vote for.  And because of that, I was all the more cautious.  I don't want to vote for someone based off personal reasons, I want my decision based off the actual politics.

So the obvious solution to my ignorance is to become informed and do some research on the candidates.  EXCEPT I DON'T TRUST ANYONE.  As a college student, we're taught repeatedly to check our sources and to make sure they're peer reviewed and legitimate.  These sources don't include most of the media, so Fox, CNN, Facebook, and Youtube really don't meet my criteria.  If I want to learn the straight up facts, I should go to the original or primary resources, but I'm way too dumb for that stuff.  I am no scholar when it comes to politics and statistics, so I need it dumbed down.   Which is what the news and other media sources are for.  But they're all biased, and all my facebook friends are biased so who do I trust?  Basically it's a Catch-22.  To get the unadulterated truth, I have to read the primary sources which make absolutely no sense to me.  To understand what I'm reading, I have to find simplified yet biased sources that aren't really informing me at all.   I'M SO CONFUSED.

Speaking of Facebook, I hate it.  But I'm addicted, so I can't break away.  I don't necessarily get mad when people post political comments or links on Facebook, because that's what social media is for.  But it starts to take its toll.  I don't pick sides to be annoyed with--I honestly get just as mad with the Democrats as the Republicans.  I often feel like a lot of the Republicans simply sound ignorant, and the Democrats angsty.  And most of the stuff is negative about the other party's candidate.  Which gets old real fast.  And mostly it's just a hate fest, and it makes me depressed that our country can be so divided.  Ok, I'll spare you this cliche rant, but really.  Why is there so much hate.  Hate starts to blur the facts with opinions, and then this whole voting thing is kind of worthless.

I probably sound more like an idiot than a weary citizen, but these are my complaints nonetheless.  And I promise I'll vote the next time.    Hopefully by then I'll be more informed.  And hopefully so will the rest of America.