c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a pastor, writer and software developer living in Winston-Salem, N.C.)

UNDATED _ It is early on Election Day. I have a decision to make.

Candidates desperate to catch the public eye have done their worst and now must wait to see if attack ads and the tenacious harvesting of dirt made any difference.

In my home state, Sen. Lauch Faircloth, a Republican from North Carolina, has aired his last ad in which a Clinton sound-alike says Democrat John Edwards is”just like me,”managing to imply that Edwards is a duplicitous anti-gun, anti-tobacco sexual predator prowling for interns.

Pretty clever. I can see why Faircloth ditched his regular attack-ad manager three weeks ago and hired an even meaner thug for the final stretch.

The National Rifle Association has aired its last ad portraying unfettered gun sales as preservation of the U.S. Constitution.

Jesse Helms and the eternally optimistic Dan Quayle have sat on their last bale of tobacco with whatever candidate wanted to scare East Carolina’s voters.

Across the country, while the stock market was gyrating, Asia was collapsing, and more serious thinkers were examining interest rates and negotiating peace in volatile ethnic struggles, politicians have done their biennial Veg-a-matic number on the electorate. Like carnival hustlers trying to sell $2 dicers as $20 magic, they have slung dirt, distorted opponents’ positions, and reduced the nation’s welfare to mock-moral sound-bites about sex.

And now my decision: Do I even vote? Do I wade through the slime and cast my preference for the least offensive wannabes? Having been insulted for six months, do I think my vote even matters?

They have no idea who we are, of course. They just lumped us together as distracted, uninformed fools, who don’t care enough about our nation to do anything harder than scan headlines. They appealed to our leering side, our fears, our greed, our latent distaste for strangers. Like a child who lies unconvincingly but earnestly, they told us obvious untruths and hoped we would be forgiving of mendacity, too stupid to see it, or too lazy to care.

Voting is a little more difficult for me this year. Having moved recently, I need to go to my old precinct, ask for a form, and take it across town to my new precinct. A 10-minute outing will take an hour.

But I heard a radio ad yesterday in which African-American poet Maya Angelou urged people to vote.”Our people fought hard to get the right to vote,”she said. Indeed they did. A generation ago, Jesse Helms was a radio commentator doing his part to keep segregation alive. But that changed, not because the white establishment suddenly saw the light, but because marchers, rebels, religious leaders and the oppressed themselves fought against injustice.

My forebears fought, too. I need to remember that. They fought for religious freedom in the colonies of New Haven and New Jersey. They helped to throw off British oppression. They ventured west into hostile territory and helped to convert Indiana’s unending forest into farmland.

My grandfather fought in World War I. My father and mother stopped everything to serve in World War II. For years, Dad closed his business on election day to serve at the poll. Even now, when he finds it difficult to stand for long, he will serve at his precinct, one man doing his small part to ensure that democracy survives.

In the painfully ambiguous days of Vietnam, I did my patriotic duty by protesting what I considered a foolish and unjust war. My classmate and friend Bob Adams did his patriotic duty by serving _ and dying _ in Vietnam. I found his name on a wall in Washington. Now, I find myself depicted as a cowardly anti-Christian whose logical outcome is oral sex in the White House.

Our politicians will do anything to stay in office. They will treat their opponents as dirt, their constituents as fools, and special interests as heroic benefactors. This isn’t what we and our forebears fought for. We fought for the right to live _ and to disagree _ in freedom, not so that politicians could sell this nation for campaign contributions and treat citizens as dupes.

So, yes, I will vote. Not enthusiastically, because the current crop of vote-chasers gives us little to believe in, but as a grim duty that might some day lead to better.

DEA END EHRICH