And we’re just starting

Idon’t know about you, but the presidential campaign has made me sick, truly sick. My illness comes despite the fact that we have only been in a real contest for a few weeks.

Perhaps in part because your servant has already decided how he is going to vote, the feeling of bloat is even greater. Unless something extraordinary happens between now and Election Day, I’m ready to start filling in the little bubbles on the ballot form.

Commercials, political propaganda, speeches and events that are held to promote presidential candidates seem irrelevant to me at this point.

Note, with this column I am not trying to discourage other voters. On the contrary, I believe that it is very important to be as well informed as possible when completing your ballot.

For me and possibly for many others, though, political campaigns are an excess. I speak not about a specific political party, but about those like me who belong to the second largest political force in California — independent voters.

I respect (up to a point) members and advocates of the Republican and Democratic Party, as long as they respect the opinion of others. But there are those who are exaggeratedly passionate, to the extent of defending their candidates with blows. That is not only barbaric, but even stupid.

Much political commentary is delivered these days without foundation or with half- baked lies. That’s another point that has me fed up — neither side in this conflict can be trusted. Perhaps the best thing that could happen to us independents who have already decided how we’re going to vote would be that they advance the elections.

We independents effectively make up the second largest political party in California. A decade ago, the so- called “decline to state” voters did not account for 10,000 voters in the entire county, but they did represent 18.11 percent of the total registered voters. Since then, Supervisor District 1 has ranked first in the number of independent voters in the Imperial Valley. By city, Calexico has been at the top in number of independent voters, followed by El Centro and Brawley.

By 2015, there were 14,276 independent voters countywide, surpassing the Republicans. The percentage of unaffiliated voters was 24.64 percent, about half the share of Democratic voters. In that year, Calexico outnumbered El Centro in independent voters by nearly 600 and had nearly three times as those registered in Brawley.

For the elections of this virulent 2020, voters without party preference reached close to 21,000 and 26.48 percent of the total. Currently, Calexico exceeds 6,000 registered independent voters, more than Brawley and Imperial combined.

With each passing year, the number of independent voters approaches the number of Democrats and moves away from that of Republicans. The is a trend political parties should pay heed.