How to Vote for President

With the recent spate of announcements of presidential candidacies, it occurs to me that there would be great value in developing a systematic approach to candidate selection. With my background in the efficiencies of municipal procurement, who better than I to produce and disseminate such a system.

Behold the hand-dandy calcu-vote system:

1. Identify your most important core value

2. Rate each candidate according to degree of pandering to that value on a scale of 0 to 5 (0 = "I do not speak French"; 5 = "is your tongue supposed to go there?"

3. Identify 2 policy proposals from each candidate that conflate (your) self-interest and improbable predictions of macro-economic effects and rate each on a scale of 0 to 5 (0= "you want to raise my taxes and to fix social security?"; 5="cheap Chinese TV's and jobs at home? sounds good to me!")

4. Rate each candidate on a scale of 0 to 5 for combined naturalness and salt-and-pepper-ness of hair. (0=Donald Trump; 5=George Clooney)

5. Rate each candidate on a scale of 0 t0 5 for absence of melanin (0=Jack Johnson; 5 = George Will)

6. Sample each candidate's stump speech for 1 minute and add 1 point for each occurence of "Freedom" ,"America" ,"Hope", "Values" and "Future" up to a maximum of 10. For any occurences above 10, deduct 2 points per occurence

7. For each candidate, count the number of X and Y chromosomes. Assign 2 points for each X chromosome and 5 for each Y (up to a maximum of 5)

8. Add up the scores for steps 1-7 and vote for the candidate with the highest total.

9. If there is a tie, vote for Ross Perot.

10. If Ross Perot is not on the ballot select a fringe party candidate at random (make sure to bring a coin or die into the voting booth).

Without giving too much away (after all the ballot is supposed to be secret), I can tell you that I have put this system to very good use already, and I have a pretty good idea who's going to come out on top. Let's just say "President Vilseck" has a nice ring to it.