In Tuesday's Viewpoints section, the staff editorial urged readers to vote, claiming they had never heard a valid excuse not to exercise this fundamental right. I thought I would share why I have logically and reasonably decided not to vote in this election.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau Web site, there are more than 305 million legal residents in the United States as I write. Only two candidates are presented by the media as actual contenders for the presidency. Does this seem wrong to anyone else? Does anyone believe that the best political minds America could furnish its voters in 2004 were George W. Bush and John Kerry?

For the past two years I have followed the election as close as, or closer than, any Marquette student I know. Yet this election cycle has taught me how truly flawed our electoral system is. While we do not have executions, riots or revolutions surrounding our polling stations, George Washington would be horrified at American politics today. In his Farewell Address, Washington warned Americans of the dangers of a political party system, in which small groups of people could control elections and have disproportionate influence over the direction of the country. Is this not exactly what we have today?

Why are third party candidates shut out of the discussion? Why are they laughed off as political loons, simply because they do not fit into the nice, neat camps of Republican or Democrat? Why do states require third parties (and not Republicans or Democrats) to collect thousands of signed petitions merely to appear on the ballot?

We are given two choices by the media and our electoral system, and neither of them matches my political views. I want a president who believes in the Constitution, the ideology of our Founding Fathers and a limited government. Barack Obama ran on a message of "change," but what will he really change? He wants to send more troops to Afghanistan, bail out Wall Street banks and increase the size of government. John McCain called himself a "maverick." Yet did he offer a solution to America's growing debt to the Chinese? Would he have closed the military bases we have in 136 foreign nations, which cost us billions of dollars every year? I think not.

We as Americans should have a greater range of political philosophies to choose from. I do not believe I am the only American who feels this way. In short, it's not that I am lazy, uninformed or too busy to vote, but rather that I refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils. I should not have to vote for an evil at all.