The Idiot's Guide to Voting

illustration by Bob AulYou came to vote, clutching a phony "voters guide." You were so dependent on the "guide" that you and your wife couldn't vote at the same time since you had to take turns with it. I stifled the urge to rip the guide out of your hands and tell you not to come back until you could at least remember what or whom you wanted to vote for on your own and remember it for more than 15 seconds. Turns out you left your guide behind in the booth. A courtesy, I suppose, in case other morons were too stupid to figure out how to vote by themselves. Of course, later, when I saw which guide it was, I longed to tell you how the questions were contorted so that candidates could mindlessly check off "support" to every question and how the candidates that looked so good in your traditional, moral, family-values guide included wife beaters, adulterers and crooks enriching themselves at the public's expense. But I couldn't. You were gone, smugly satisfied that you had done your patriotic duty by voting. Next time, please don't.