Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe

Trey Smith

That said, I did receive some earnest requests for advice on how to make a responsible — or at least, vaguely logical — voting decision in such an impossibly depressing election.

To those of you looking for such counsel, let me say that while I don’t have the only valid response to that request, I’d be happy to reveal the crude point system I rely on during elections like this. If just hours out from Election Day you still haven’t decided how to vote, you might find it useful.

Rejecting the premise that the campaigns get to dictate what policy debates and are not important, I start by breaking the major presidential issues into four categories, each of increasing significance to my vote:

1) Freedom Issues: These are issues involving liberty, including civil liberties, privacy, a woman’s right to choose an abortion and consenting adults’ general rights (for example, to consume marijuana or to legally recognized same-sex marriage).

2) Mass Suffering Issues: These are the issues involving millions of people in severe pain or agony, including poverty, hunger, joblessness, low wages, civil rights/discrimination and criminal justice/incarceration.

3) Mass Death Issues: As the name implies, these are the issues involving thousands or millions of people not just suffering, but actually losing their lives. I include health care, toxic pollution, medium-sized regional wars and terrorism.

4) Possible World-Enders: These are the select few issues that could actually end civilization as we know it. In this election, Among those are an apocalyptic war (say with Iran or a nuclear Pakistan), funding for prevention of pandemics and the fight against catastrophic global climate change – with the latter’s imminence underscored by Hurricane Sandy.

Each category should get a certain amount of total points – in my personal schematic, issues involving physical pain and death are weighted, meaning freedom gets 2 points, mass suffering gets 4 points, mass death gets 6 points and world enders get 10 points.

~ from How to Choose a President by David Sirota ~

Utilizing Sirota's calculus, I'm not sure if this will help a still undecided voter. In my book, both Obama and Romney would receive failing scores! So, it would seem to me that a person using a methodology like this would be compelled to vote third party.

Of course, there is another time-honored mechanism for making such a difficult decision: Heads or Tails.