Voters across America often put aside their own morals and views when it comes to picking a candidate because too often the candidate is simply the lesser of two evils. In many cases, voters do not even like the candidates or know very little about them and still they vote for them.

Our upcoming presidential election is an excellent example because some women are voting for Hillary Clinton just because they would like to have a woman president. In an article on csmoniter.com said that “National polls give Clinton an extra eight points or so because many women make gender the determinative factor in their choice.”

Similarly, some black voters are casting their votes for Barack Obama just because he has black heritage. Sadly, many voters do not know what each candidate really stands for. Further, because Obama and Clinton are the main candidates for the presidency right now, neither is willing to step down. The end result will require a vast percentage of the Democratic Party to side with their not-ideal candidate.

In the Republican Party, many conservatives are voting for a not-so-conservative John McCain simply because their ideal candidate, Mike Huckabee won’t have the popularity McCain carries. Huckabee, is considered by many Republicans to be too conservative; his moral views strongly oppose many accepted practices today such as homosexuality and abortion. Because even many Republicans today do not hold to strict conservative views, McCain by default becomes the better Republican candidate because he supports more modern-day views. However, because traditional Republicans are outnumbered, they must side with McCain.

What’s wrong with this picture? Many Americans nowadays no longer fully believe in who they vote for. This concept of the “lesser of two evils” candidate is dominating in the political arena to a shocking degree.

Partially responsible for the misalignment that occurs between the voters’ choice and voters’ picks occurs from the amount of publicized garbage that each candidate slings at one another. Voters often base their picks on whose reputation is the cleanest.

Too often voters don’t even know the real issues and stances each candidate holds because their advertisements and propaganda just attack another candidate. This can hide important issues that should be emphasized so voters can base decisions upon real issues and not just mudslinging.

If standards were set to limit or abolish the amount of mudslinging that candidates could do to each other, very important changes and improvements could possibly be made resulting in better voter turnout, better alignment between voters and their ideal candidate, and even a smoother running government.

In this land of democracy American citizens need to start taking a more aggressive stance to hold onto their values and morals. Compromising candidates has reached a point where citizens no longer really believe in who they vote for and it’s reaching a point where this misalignment between voter and candidate should not be tolerated any longer. At the least, voters should demand a change in the way candidates present and conduct their campaign so that slander and mudslinging no longer dominate political advertisements.