Midterm elections, shmidte...no that's too long

Tuesday is election day for all representatives and a third of the senate. Having heard absolutely nothing about the candidates running for representative of my district, I sat down tonight to find out a bit about them so I can perform my civic duty. First off, it took me about half an hour to figure out which district I live in - I finally found a handy little tool on the Texas Legislature website where you can type in your address and it tells you your district. Turns out I live in district 7 where the Republican incumbent John Culberson is running against Democrat Jim Henley and Libertarian Drew Parks.

When I choose a candidate, there are a few issues on which my vote hinges - abortion and same-sex marriage to name a couple. I will not vote for a candidate who is anti-choice or anti-same-sex marriages. So I figured the first thing I would do was find each candidate's stance on these issues and go from there. I was determined to get their stances from their election websites to ensure I was reading what they really felt. I figured this would take all of five minutes...boy was I wrong!

Neither Culberson nor Henley listed their stances on these issues in easy to find locations on their websites. In fact, it took almost an hour of digging to find where they stand on these. It suddenly hit me that by listing your stance on a divisive issue where it's easy to find, you can lose an awful lot of votes. However, wouldn't that be more honest?

Turns out Culberson is anti-choice and anti-same-sex marriage, Henley is pro-choice but I couldn't find his stance on same-sex marriage. Parks is a nut-case - supports eliminating federally funded welfare, all support of international organizations (U.N., NATO), federal funding for abortions and a slew of other things he deems to be "excess expenditure." However, he put it all out there in an easy to find spot on his website! I suppose having no chance of winning an election makes it easier to be brutally honest. Despite the fact that I disagree with most of his stances, I like that kind of politics.

So at the end of the day, I'll be voting Democrat but wishing the Republicans and Democrats both took a page from the Libertarian campaign book.