So over here in the good 'ol US of A we're approaching Election Day for our congress members. In my state, Pennsylvania we've got the race for governor going on, and... it seems like everything else as well. Our state congress gave themselves a pay raise recently, and if anything that's made the elections all the more volatile in my area.

I'm sick of all of the negative ads floating around out there. I was just downstairs watching the 6pm news, there was a commercial break and it only had 1 real commercial in it, everything else was election ad followed by election ad.

All the typical things, ominous music, black and white pictures for the 'bad' guy with the 'good' guy saying "I'm so-and-so and I approved this message!" Something new I've noticed is the one where they take a very small snippet of a conversation the 'bad' guy had, and replay his voice, with a funny/angry looking picture of him in the background, while calling him a hypocrite because this small out of context phrase is seemingly saying he says one thing and does another. Your ad sounds like a broken record and only makes me angry at you, not whoever the ad is directed at.

Oh ya, and then I get phone calls (yes I'm on a typical no-call list for ads, it seems they don't apply for non-profit type things) phone calls telling me "Do you hate how you're always getting phone calls from Candidate X? Well Candidate Y does too, vote for Candidate Y!"

...I only ever get phone calls FROM candidate Y.

AAAAAAAAARGH! I HATE when I get political spam on the phone.

I know the feeling about the phone politics. And Im not even 18!

Sounds like you need caller id

If Maryland elects O'Malley for governer, I'm going to go around and punch everyone who voted for him. Every last one.

I'm kind of sick of the TV ads too. But at 21, I really only vote for president anyway, don't care much about the others yet.

Rick Santorum is an idiot... he shows he hates mexicans,south and central americans, and muslims, he also shows he has no decency in ads.... what a jackass

I never trust politics, I just leave it to the others and when they voted for a idiotic leaders, I blame them.

Anyone who can say, "I am for this and this and this. If you are, you should vote for me," will get huge brownie points from me, even if I don't agree with him. If all you can come up with is, "Vote for me because he's the devil," you shouldn't be running for office.

By not voting, you forfeit all bitching rights. So vote or shut up.

They actually phone you? Ouch, that's bad.

I hate that kind of ad too, but I also don't expect anything better watching parliament question time. They act like children all the way through their term, why wouldn't they act like children showing they fit in.

I've never had political calls from politicians. WEIRD if you guys do. I wonder if anyone in Britain does that and I'm just lucky.

Probably a side effect of us North Americans wanting to have freedom in everything they can. Though, we can easily just slam the phone down. I do that with telemarketers.

The other side of that is, while you can hang up whenever you want, people trying to sell you something are not allowed to. We had tons of fun in college calling QVC and keeping the poor guy on the phone for 20 minutes just spouting random crap. Then you call back again and get a different operator and screw with that one too.

They're not actual person-to-person phone calls (if they were, Zenji and I would've probably told them where to stick their candidate by the dozenth or so time), they're a phone call with a recorded message that plays. And I swear, every time we get one, whether we pick up or not (yes, I'm just assuming that most of the time when we ignore the phone and don't recognize the phone number it's them ... nobody else calls us, family uses email and such), it disrupts our Internet connection ... either when the call comes in, when you pick it up, or when you hang up. Or all three!

Had one that I heard that I almost wish I'd've had recorded some how, it was so funny. From the one candidate's wife. She said things like (and no, sadly I'm not exaggerating much): "I've been shocked and horrified by 's recent accusations against my husband that he's a liar. He would never lie! My husband is the most honest, wonderful man I know. I know your time is important, but I really just felt I had to let you know that."

If ever I met that particular candidate, which I won't, I'd love to get the courage up to smile sweetly and thank them for the inundation of ridiculous phone calls and flyers from his campaign, not to mention the idiotic tv ads that showed he apparently has no qualifications or ideas other than that his opposition is the devil, because with every one I saw or heard it turned my determination more firmly against him and I spread the word to other voters who became similarly dissatisfied. Even if he'd be too smarmy to react, maybe it'd still burst his internal bubble a bit.

Can I vote at 18?

Yes. Just have to have registered in time (back when I was in high school they handed up the information things so we could fill them out and be registered without going to the trouble of tracking down the registration information ourselves), and be turning 18 on or before the day of the election.

Uh... yes?

Different here at the Philippines

So why are you asking us? Go find out!

I think that was a weirdly worded rhetorical question.