US08: On overseas voting and how scary Sarah Palin is

Last week my US voter registration form was returned to me in the mail because I forgot to tick the most important box, the one that says “Are you an American citizen?”. By the time the letter crossed from one side of the planet to the other, voting registration had closed in Washington. Now I am powerless and voiceless despite paying taxes in that state last year and being a US citizen since the day I was born. The value of Australia’s compulsory voting system became apparent to me the moment I opened that envelope, and images of John McCain and Sarah Palin in the whitehouse danced before me.

Now I’m not delusional enough to believe that my measly vote would actually mean anything, but somewhere between my highschool classes about Greek democracy and watching Tina Fey pretending to be Palin on Saturday Night Live, I decided I MUST exercise my rights as a citizen. Now I’m fuming because I didn’t tick that stupid box and I’m terrifed that McCain will win and then die sometime in the next four years leaving a quarter of the world’s economy in the hands of a woman who thinks humans walked with dinosaurs, victims should pay for their own rape kits and tattoo-lip liner is a good idea. And I won’t even be able to smugly tell every one I know that I voted for the other guy.

What will become of us?

While I admit Sarah Palin has made the race more ‘interesting’, the prospect of her leading the USA is really really really scary. Would she take away reproductive rights? Will she make all schools teach intelligent design? Will she permit the indescriminate shooting of endangered species across the continent? Will she usher in another hairspray addled era of beehive hairdoos and make up that doesn’t match the colour of your neck?

Would a Palin style future see the Alaskan wilderness drilled for oil, all the polar bears die, backyard abortions become commonplace, all people who ever saw Bill Ayers walking down the street publically denounced as terrorists and would the stock market will collapse again when Palin brings all her highschool buddies in to fix up the economy?

If Obama doesn’t win then some scientist out there needs to pre-emptively develop an antidote to any of the age related illnesses that could bring old man McCain down at any moment.

Please let those crazy people in the car park at the Palin rally have forgotten to tick that top box too.