2012 Election wraps up - almost

By Randa Wagner –

By the time you have this edi­tion of the Nov. 7 Sen­tinel in your hands, the polls will have closed and cit­i­zens will know who their next elected offi­cials are.

Almost.

Though the cam­paign­ing is over, the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion — tech­ni­cally speak­ing — is not. The elec­toral col­lege has yet to offi­cially select the next president.

Each state’s elec­tors assem­bles in their state capi­tol on Decem­ber 17 to sign a “Cer­tifi­cate of Vote,” which is then sealed and deliv­ered to the Office of the Pres­i­dent of the United States Sen­ate. A spe­cial joint ses­sion of the U.S. Con­gress con­venes on Jan­u­ary 6, 2013, when the Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate reads the Cer­tifi­cates of Votes and declares the offi­cial winner.

In what the Asso­ci­ated Press referred to Mon­day as a ‘stub­bornly dead­locked race,’ Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and chal­lenger Mitt Rom­ney were ‘storm­ing through a final exhaus­tive cam­paign push Mon­day that won’t end until the wee hours of Elec­tion Day in pur­suit of every pos­si­ble vote.’ Gee — they don’t seem too con­fi­dent, do they? Seems to me that if some­one in office has been doing their job right dur­ing their term, heck — they shouldn’t even have to cam­paign! They should be able to stand on their own mer­its and let their oppo­nent spend mil­lions of dol­lars and run around the coun­try mak­ing all kinds of promises to vot­ers. Same with any elected offi­cial. In my sim­ple mind, if they have been doing their job hon­estly and in earnest with the cit­i­zens’ best inter­est in mind, they shouldn’t have to cam­paign to keep their job. It would be a no-brainer for their constituents.

But no.… every four years we have to put up with a year’s worth of mud-slinging, dirty laun­dry, accu­sa­tions and name call­ing. This cam­paign is just about the ugli­est and most piti­ful I can recall in many years. Doesn’t say much for our would-be lead­ers, eh?

This has been an expen­sive elec­tion year, too. Accord­ing to Adweek, the spend­ing trend is on track to meet Wells Fargo’s fore­cast of $3.37 bil­lion in total TV. Yes, that’s BILLIONS, folks. More than 42 per­cent of the spend­ing was for the pres­i­den­tial race. The Asso­ci­ated Press says never before has so much money been spent on so many com­mer­cials aimed at so few vot­ers (many peo­ple get their news online now). The two pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns, the polit­i­cal par­ties and their allied inde­pen­dent groups aired 1,015,615 ads between June 1 and Oct. 29 — almost 40 per­cent more than the num­ber of ads that ran in the same period in 2008, when Obama defeated Repub­li­can John McCain for the presidency.

Sad. Inse­cu­rity is expen­sive. At least the TV, radio ads and phone calls will finally stop.

The offi­cial end result remains to be seen. This news­pa­per prints at noon on Tues­days, ahead of poll clos­ings on Elec­tion Day, so we are unable to post elec­tion out­comes in Nov. 7’s paper. For state and local elec­tion and levy results, please visit our web­site at www.morrowcountysentinel.com or call our office at 419–946-3010.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Nov 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.