Election Day is here, and not a moment too soon.  After over a year of campaigning, I think just about everyone was getting anxious for Nov. 4 to arrive.

While covering this historic election, I’ve had the chance to talk to just about every type of young voter you can think of: first time, excited, pessimistic, right-wing, left-wing, somewhere in the middle, and more.  I’ve also talked to young people campaigning and volunteering their time to help run Election Day activities.

All of it was interesting – I mean, come on.  Youth in Mississippi are coming out to vote this year like ants to a picnic.  What’s not cool about that?  But there was one moment that made me go, “Hmm…”  It involved a member of a campaign who, really, wasn’t in sync with her campaign.

On Sept. 24, I uploaded a video to the think site about the UM Constitutionalist, a non-partisan student activist group at the university of Mississippi.  The group formed the “None of the Above” campaign, which encouraged students to write “none of the above” on their ballots on Nov. 4 in order to grab the attention of politicians and leaders.  The purpose is to show people that there is a legit group of citizens who would rather have “none of the above” than the two major choices – in this case Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain. 

It was powerful.  It was passionate.

Click here to view the video: http://think.mtv.com/044FDFFFF0098A0BE001700993704/

However, when I ran into Asma Al-Sherri, an active member of the organization and one of the campaigners interviewed in my earlier video, she told me she wasn’t going to write in “none of the above.”  Instead, she was voting for a third-party candidate:

But doesn’t this defeat the purpose of the whole campaign?  How does the group expect to grab the attention of politicians by writing in “none of the above” when they vote give their votes to third-party candidates instead? 

It seems to me that this is a campaign gone wrong.  It went from writing "none of the above" on the ballot to writing "none of the above" OR voting for a third-party candidate. 

Although I can see how voting for a third-party candidate instead of for Obama or McCain is still making a statement, it’s not near as strong.  The last time I checked, the name of the campaign was “NONE of the Above,” not “SOME of the Above.”

What was once predicted to be a powerful statement by college students at the University of Mississippi has now just turned into a few extra votes for third-party candidates.

Oh well, maybe next time.