We finally have 2 dorks to choose between.  How do you choose which one represents you best?  Simple really, just follow these steps and you will hardly even have to think or pay attention for the next 5 months. Start by making a list of the candidates you are considering voting for.  It should have 2 names, Barack and John.  If you have more and are considering a write in vote or third party candidate, good for you, that will show them (as well as waste your vote on a loser, which I am trying to help you avoid).  If you are a brainless drone voting the way your family or friends tells you, you are not really voting, but rather demonstrating your similarities with a sheep or lemming, so please just go read something else.  Oh, and if you are voting based on skin color, please find some moderately slow way to kill yourself, that balances pain and agony with adequate expedience to get yourself out of the gene pool before election day. 

So, how to vote?  My suggested method is as follows, after the break: 
1) If you see either candidate repeat the same pathetic line more than once per speech, put a mark next to their name on your list for every time they say it (and yes, accumulation of points is bad).  For example, John may repeat “that is not change we can believe in”, followed by a fake, awkward, and kinda scary smile while he waits for applause, while Barack will repeat the phrase “Bush/Mcain” with a smooth as silk delivery that should scare you even more, unless you like your politicians that way. 
2) If you DON’T notice a candidate is reading from a teleprompter or cards, make a mark by their name.  When they get so good at it that they look natural, that is bad.  Same with makeup.  When you stop noticing it, be warned. 
3) If someone you know is pure evil says something nice with sincere passion, go ahead and trust your gut and give their object of adoration a mark.  Think, Karl Rove or Henry Waxman.  If someone like that liked me I would be upset and strive to change my ways until I earned their displeasure. 
4) To punish exploiters of our retarded single-issue voters (like gun rights or gay marriage), add a mark next to the person who brings it up (for or against).  For example, if John talks about homo-love, give him a mark, but also do the same for Barack, cuz they are both just pandering to you on that crap.  Only talking about real issues will avoid a mark. 
5) If a candidate brings up their age or the age of their competitor, give them a mark.  John went to high school with George Washington and Barack was just starting kindergarten when Britney stopped being hot.  Neither of them is a good choice with age as a criterion.  Similarly, if they mention spouses, military service record, or their church, give them the markdown they deserve.  Yes, some of these things can influence how they will govern, but why not use their voting history and their previous actions to develop an accurate assessment instead of an implied guess of their likely behavior. 
6) Last but not least, add 10, yes 10 marks to the guy who is a member of the party you voted for last time.  This will even out any irrelevant and pointless associations that have no business in this process.  If you already knew for sure which party you would vote for before the candidates where even glimmers in the eyes of the political hacks trying to force their beliefs on you, add another 10 points to your man.  Yes, he is starting 20 points behind, but lets face it, if you vote purely on party lines, he will make it up pretty quick, as you will blindly ignore the his failings like the “enlightened” consumer of democracy that you are.

There you go!  Count who has the most marks, and vote for the other guy.  Come November when you are asked who you voted for, you can proudly tell them, knowing that you used a scientific method to make the right choice.  “But what if I don’t like the performance of my candidate if he wins” you may ask?  Don’t worry, none of us are going to be happy this time, so don’t let it get you down.  In 4 years, hopefully we will all be talking about how much better our options are and how we all learned our lessons.  Then again, we might feel so bad about forcing all of our “representatives” who had demonstrated gross incompetence to move to Canada that we will feel guilty about letting new people have a try at actually representing the rest of us.