I have two votes coming up - one for Toronto, Canada (Oct 27), two for Romania (Nov 2, 16). And as usual, I will make a serious effort to vote - I won't wait in line 10 hours, for instance, but I will give it a couple of hours of my time. I thought I go through the possible candidates for election and why I (mostly) won't vote for them.

The first two words of the title are formed by castling the first letters of the two words, which is an insult to Victor Ponta, the current Romanian Prime-Minister and considered most likely to win the November vote for Romanian Presidency.

So why should YOU not vote? Simply because if you are unsure whether to vote or not and are liable to listen to advice on this matter, there’s a good chance you’ll be making a bad choice. So don’t bother – it’s not worth it. You are also not the target audience for the rest of this article, so go ahead and do something better with your time. Masturbating is an excellent choice! (See also the end of MEP voting in Toronto.)

If, however, you have voted in most elections but sometimes wonder whether you may have been wasting your time, check out the Wikipedia article below (wiki-no) or idebate debatabase (idb-voting). I am open to debate or judge any such debate in the conditions described in http://asa.zamo.ca/likeadacian, but I have no intention on having it for free with confused individuals. And that is because these are very basic, foundational bricks in being a civic animal. Any and all further choices you need to make in your life within a [quasi/pseudo]democracy rest on this assumption – that you understand the need to vote.

Finally, one false choice presented to the Romanian idiots is “voting strategically” vs “voting with the heart” – in this dichotomy, “voting strategically” is equivalent to voting cerebrally. This is the dumbest idea I have ever heard and it is a way of sneaking in a candidate nobody likes (such as Iohannis) based on spreading the meme that he’s the only one who could dethrone Ponta. This would make more sense if there was only one election date – first-past-the-post style, but that is not true. So in this scenario, the herd of Romanian idiots is voting for Iohannis because they believe that each other Romanian from their posse will also vote Iohannis, each one voting based on what they think other people will be voting. It thus follows that the “cerebral” vote can be easily swayed with a few counterfeit pre-vote surveys. Furthermore, if surveys can thus determine the result of the vote, why bother at all to have the far more expensive, disruptive and difficult to organize elections? Does it not make sense to vote by telephone sampling, saving thus all that political show, if we trust published surveys with our decisions?

“Voting strategically” is only marginally less idiotic than not voting at all.

These are the main choices I shall cover in-depth later. For now, my pre-research top.

1. Macovei. My vote will go to her on November 2 and possibly, though not likely, on November 16. She is widely credited with making Romanian Justice “work” – the convictions against former PM Adrian Nastase and many others are a direct result of her work. Being an independent makes her even more deserving of my vote. (I have some reservations on whether those convictions are the result of a functional or ideal justice system, but that’s a topic for another article.)
2. Udrea. Though a bit ugly for someone campaigning under the slogan “beautiful Romania” she has one main quality – she is also an outsider in a male-dominated field. Though she will undoubtedly steal from the taxpayer, like any other president-elect, I am hoping that she’d be stealing far less than any of her male counterparts. And if the presidential function is mostly symbolic, being a woman head of state is not a bad one at that.
3. Ponta. I don’t like Ponta, but I detest Iohannis even more, for the reasons below.
4. Tariceanu. I don’t know much about this guy, but my initial impression is that he’s worse than Ponta. This may change after doing some research.
5. Melescanu. He was the chief of the secret service, and that makes him marginally worse than Tariceanu, about whom I know nothing.
6. Iohannis. He was placed on the ballot and made a name in Romanian politics based solely on Romanian self-hatred and the belief that Germans are superiour. I do not share that belief. I have a few German friends and they are all outstanding people, but that is not because they are German but rather because I am selective with my friends. I would never vote for someone due solely for their ethnicity, and when it comes to Iohannis, the little I know about him is not good.
7. Hunor. Will be voted only by Hungarian ethnics. That is wrong and I think as long as we have parties and candidates flaunted and formed on ethnic criteria, Romania will stay a rural, Balkanic country.

It’s only natural that I’d be voting for “ethnic” candidates last. After all, in Ad Kalendas Dacas (Like a Dacian II) I make it as clear as I possibly can that ethnic generalization is the top intellectual crime to be avoided by anyone with minimum half-a-functional brain.

Coming up soon, a more in-depth analysis of each candidate and a likely reshuffling of the top above.

Sources / More info: wiki-no, idb-voting, wiki-ro, testvot, wl-ggl, kc3