A couple weeks back, I wrote a column about the presidential debates and how I was looking forward to them because I hoped they would help me choose between President George Bush and Sen. John Kerry.

After three debates, with rigid rules, that didn’t get away from discussing Iraq ad nauseam like I feared, I am no closer to choosing a candidate.

While the debates were as equally fascinating as frustrating, neither candidate came out and said anything I didn’t expect. Kerry kept accusing Bush of not having a plan for bringing peace to Iraq, and Bush kept attacking Kerry’s “flip-flopping” voting record in the Senate. Neither of their plans for domestic policy impressed me enough to sway me one way or another, and I’m still left in the middle.

The only debates that have brought me closer to choosing a side are the ones I have with my Kerry-backing friends who attempt to convince me George Bush is an idiot. I find myself defending Bush against people who find him to be no more than a redneck from Texas who, they are convinced, will destroy the world if he is reelected. As a redneck from Illinois, I find Bush a lot easier to relate to than John “I married a billionaire” Kerry.

Yet my fears of George Bush’s plans beyond Iraq are enough to prevent me from supporting him.

I realized that anguishing over voting for Bush is a mute point, at least as long as I live in Illinois.

When the founding fathers of this country designed the country’s election process they installed a system called the Electoral College to prevent “uninformed” voters from electing the wrong candidate. At the time, when a sizeable portion of the voting population was illiterate, it seemed like a good idea. A couple centuries later, it seems like an unnecessary process that adversely influences presidential campaigning.

This was seen in the last presidential election where Al Gore won the popular vote, but Bush won the presidency because he won the right states.

Since I am a registered voter in Coles County, it doesn’t matter if I vote for Bush. Thanks to the political machine that is Chicago and its election mantra of vote early, vote often, John Kerry will easily take Illinois and its 21 electoral votes. The only states with more electoral votes are California (55), Texas (34), New York (31) and Florida (27), while Pennsylvania matches Illinois with 21.

With this presidential race seeming even closer than its predecessor in 2000, it’s inevitable that the Electoral College will come into question by the time all the votes are counted this year.

It’s actually already in question in some states. In Colorado there is an initiative on the ballot to allow the state’s nine electoral votes to be split between the candidates based on how many votes they receive. So if Bush wins 60 percent of the vote in Colorado and Kerry wins 40, Bush would get five votes, Kerry would get four and all of the votes in Colorado would be counted. In Illinois, Kerry will probably defeat Bush and those who vote for Bush will not be counted.

While I’m not sure whom I will vote for, I do know two things. If I vote for Bush, I will not be counted, and after this election there will be an outcry from either the democrats or the republicans to reevaluate the Electoral College system.