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With the elections just around the corner, I thought I would depart from my usual rants tirades educational articles about truck and highway safety and weigh in on the current election.

"Look out!" a passerby screamed. "Truckie-D is dragging out his soapbox". The crowd gasped, groaned, and then rolled their eyes, being already half-numb from the deluge of political advertising. The absolute last thing they wanted was yet another political message.

Well, not quite.

Ok, maybe a little bit.

Actually, not really. At least, not in the usual sense, of coming out in favor of. or opposition to, a particular party, candidate, or issue.

As I see it, elections are all about choices — ideally, choosing the best person to fill some elective office from those presented on a ballot. On the face of it, a pretty good idea. Mostly works pretty well. The thing is, what do you do if you're not particularly enamored of anyone on the ballot?

I suppose you could cast a write-in vote for someone, but unless there's an even slightly organized movement of some kind, a write-in has roughly the chances of the proverbial snowball. When was the last time you heard of anyone running a successful write-in campaign? Cast a protest vote? Has any candidate or party (or anyone else) ever paid attention to protest votes?

What about the situation where a candidate is running unopposed for a particular office? If you think that person is totally unqualified for that office, what then?

To address these issues, I would like to propose the following amendment to the US Constitution:

"For each elective office, on every ballot, as the last entry for each list of candidates, shall be the option to vote for 'None of the above'. Should the votes tallied for 'None of the above' equal or exceed those of any candidate or candidates for an office, then those candidates shall be disqualified from running for that office for the current term. Those candidates shall also be barred from filling that office by appointment in the case of a vacancy for that office. Nominations shall then be opened for that office for a period of five days, and an election for that office shall be held three weeks after the original election."

I'm sure one of our attorney members could do a better job drafting such an amendment, (they didn't teach much legalese in truck driving school), but I think the above conveys my meaning.

Give us the choice to say "We're not happy with the choices we've been given. Try again."

Vote safely,

td

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