And some time, too, Americans will be voting. You'd be forgiven for thinking that this was the only election in the offing, given the media coverage, and it's a little perplexing that the candidates are more familiar to many locals than those in the looming Zimbabwean elections, despite the more immediate relevance of the latter.
Having been asked by one too many person whether I supported Hillary or Obama (the girl gets called by her first name, the boy by his surname, just like primary school) I decided to take the test. You see, American politicians all look and sound the same to me unless they're Angela Davis, or the ghost of the former Angela Davis since she's also no longer what she once was. These days I'd probably have hard time telling her apart from Oprah.
Oprah endorses Obama. Perez Hilton endorses Hillary. This all makes perfect sense. But which US candidate would most closely represent my values? GlassBooth offers just such a tool to help you find out - and I was surprised to discover I'd best be represented by some guy I'd never heard of, who's no doubt lagging a good last in the race, if he hasn't dropped out entirely by now.
Which made me wonder why no one had devised a similar quiz for local politics. Each election, thousands of new voters are faced with the prospect of where to place their X, and parties come and go faster than fashions, as a visit to the IEC website will attest. Trying to make sense of the political landscape if your horizons extend further than simply endorsing the ruling party can be tricky. Does anyone other than Powerhouse Pat, for example, know what the ID's political vision actually is? What would the UDM's economic policy involve? And is the FF+ the furthest the right wing has to offer, or would that be the ACDP?
It could be a very interesting exercise...