Two more Vote-bots: Deciders for the indecisive Undecideds

Minnesota Public Radio's Select A Candidate (TM) asks 16 questions that you can weigh, and USAToday's Candidate Match Game asks 13 questions that can also be weighted to tweak your decision. Of course the questions are odd ones and your actual response cannot be found among the candidates' soundbite answers. If they worked, these would completely relieve the voter of the need to observe the candidates in their natural habitat. If only voters selected the candidates on the basis of their declared policy positions, which they don't (and shouldn't). One should actually decide based on how charismatic they are and how polite they are in debates. Manners are sure to come in handy in politics. That, and their revolutionary fervor.

MPR gave me the usual suspects: Dennis ChewSpinach, JEdwards, Hill-Rod, and Obama. USAToday gave me Gravel as #1 and Ron Paul as #3. Whatever. None of my preferred candidates will obtain enough credits to graduate from the Electoral College. Anyway, I heard somewhere that most people decide and can predict election outcomes (in their brainstems) in a split second based on the shape of the candidate's face. Being tall, having a short name, and coming early in alphabetical order are important predictors of voter appeal, too.

All in all, these cyberDeciders are welcome additions to the voters' decisional repertoire of Ouija Board, Spin the Bottle, Tarot Deck, I Ching, Astrological charts and Coin Flip. Obtaining the consent of the governed is an important consideration for the effective functioning of democratic centralism in America's elective plutocracy.