I'm so frustrated. Not at who is winning, but what I'm hearing as to why

many people are choosing who they vote for. I have my preferences, but I think I make my choices based on working hard to understand the issues and using the candidates' positions to make an informed decision. But in my regular life and watching interviews of "regular voters" on TV, plus what I see periodically on DU, I'm frustrated with the reasoning, or lack thereof, of how many people seem to pick their candidates. Here is a list of what I've heard as reasons for voting for a candidate, whether Dem or Repuke:

1. She's a woman.
2. He's black.
3. On Romney: His father was a great governor.
4. He's a "good Christian".
5. I can't stand to listen to her voice for 4 years.
6. So-and-so supports him/her.
7. Tweety is so mean, I'm voting for her.
8. I can't stand his/her supporters' opinions here on DU, so it made me decide to vote for him/her.
9. He was a war hero.
10. He/she seems angry.
11. He/she seems nice.

Lots of reasons, and while I agree that everyone needs to make their choices based on what is right for them, I certainly get frustrated when elections are decided based nothing of substance. I'm hoping that this is the minority and I just watch crappy media and have shallow acquaintances as compared to other people.

That worked out real well, didn't it?

laziness on the part of those that make their choices that way, or ignorance, or what. But it drives me crazy to think that so many people vote without really having any clue other than this shallowness for making their choices.

My wife supports Obama simply because she thinks he’s the best, although she cant even pronounce his name correctly - she hates politics with a passion – refuses to watch it, read about it or discus it, although she never fails to vote in an election for a democrat no matter what - because she came from a family of I will vote for a democrat no mater what; in fact I have no doubt that she and many others like her would vote for Hitler if he was a registered democrat . What little information propaganda she does get amounts to about five minutes a week from watching the local fox news channel. I try too explain things to her but it turns into a fight - I honestly believe it scares her, other than that she’s a sports addict that can’t miss a football, base ball or basket ball game, and if there’s no game on it’s time for judge Judy, Joe Brown etc., and then its time for wheel of fortune, who wants to be a millionaire, Greed and on and on…

Like I said, its beyond frustrating – its frightening in the sense that people like this are passionately addicted to the dummying down process in one hand, and running from a fictitious fear in the other, both of which the M$M constantly bombards them with. And unfortunately I believe they are the majority and beyond the reach of good and common sense – putting their naïve faith in the most aesthetic conservative biased corporately owned cheats – damming us all through their backwards incompetence they prove one thing, Democracy cannot survive when the majority of its participants are so easily, willingly and wantonly left in the dark…

Anyhow glad to give you the forth rec.

I'm finding are people that I normally have thought to be well-reasoned, intelligent and knowledgable folks, making these kinds of statements. Many, many people I have talked to make some kind of shallow pronouncement about who they are voting for, and when you question them further about the issues, they have no idea. It disturbs me to no end that they are willing to vote for people without having the foggiest notion of where their candidate stands on any issue.

It's almost as disturbing as those that have an opinion on the election, but when you try to discuss current events with them, they say they don't really pay attention to the news.

made by politicians that wouldn’t be able to be elected as a dog catcher if the majority of people took the time to be informed and lying was not permitted in politics. But in the real world lying is synonymous with politicians and keeping the electorate uninformed about the truth is the top priority. Maybe you have to applaud people who don’t vote, most of whom are no less uninformed than most of the people who do vote, their claims that all politicians are a bunch of crooks and you would only be voting for what you believed is the lesser of two evils is closer to the truth than not.

Talk about being uninformed – why don’t we allow children to vote – after all knowing what’s going on is definitely not a requirement, and if you can window shop you can definitely pick a politician. What’s the worst thing that can happen, we end up with Bozo the Clown or Bonzo the Chimporer? Oh yea, we’ve already done that, but hay ya never can tell - fifth graders might actually show a higher degree of critical thinking than most adults do.

and 120 suicides a week by Iraq War veterans.

What is their major malfunction? All of the candidates except Dennis K avoid the carnage that Bush and
Cheney caused in Iraq and among our troops. Many of them (now us) enabled the war by funding it again
and again as though they had a gun to their heads.

The great shame of all this has not begun and they will be held accountable before their fallow
citizens. They are not above the law and they are not above widespread scorn.

Shame on every representative and official who enabled this, who lied to start and carry it forward,
and who, knowing what was happening, kept quiet.

The public was systematically lied to. The voters are not responsible, it's THEM, you know the
people so creepy they are able to support this. THEY KNEW.

I agree that plenty of people seem to make decisions on who they vote for for really stupid reasons. I know one of my grandmothers voted for Bill Clinton both times because he looked pretty.

All of this stuff about supporting someone this election because they're a black/woman/mormon is a really dumb reason to support those people. I mean take Harry Reid, he's a Mormon, but why would he be happy to see a republican Mormon who he disagrees with on almost everything get elected president? How would that benefit him simply because they're both Mormons?

I mean I know some people might argue "black people seeing a black person as president will inspire them to do better", same with women, but can't a president who they like do the same thing?

When too many people start to base their vote on stupid stuff like this we all suffer in the end.

The experience of minorities and women in this country IS different from white people's and men's.

It WOULD cause real progress for our national leader to be black or a woman, for the example it sets and consciousness it raises among our own citizens, now and in the future.

I think it does matter, and it's not shallow, and I find no fault with people who weigh race and gender into their decisions this way; after all, this country has weighed race and gender in NON-progressive ways from the start!

are having a difficult time deciding on two candidates, due to similarity, then that might be one factor you look at. But I'm talking about people who use that as the only factor in making their decision.

As someone else pointed out, Harry Reid wouldn't vote for Romney for the sole reason that he, too, is a Mormon. There should be more depth to decision making on something this important.

Hell, Brittany Spears is a woman, but I sure as hell wouldn't want her to be President just because she is.