At the climax of every single cheesy horror movie ever made is the part when the killer is on the loose, full-force, and 90 percent of the characters die in approximately 15 fake-blood-filled minutes. During this part of the movie, you and your friends are probably making scoffing remarks about the stupidity of the dying protagonists as they poke their heads into dark corners, randomly decide to step into abandoned showers or hide alone under beds. We indulge the characters? incapability of making sound decisions for the sake of entertainment, and think to ourselves that we would never be that dumb.

I have a brilliant proposal for a new horror film. Actually, it?s more of a reality series. I call it The Primaries.

Basically, you get to be the main character through the process of electing a new president. It?s a choose-your-own-adventure type of film.

The reason I use the movie analogy is because it often feels as though Americans are simultaneously the leading players and the audience in a twisted plot that involves a presidential election and some ?killer? initial primaries. The obvious example was the Iowa caucuses.

While it is not an actual primary, the caucus provides the first concrete voting sample of the election season, so it is understandable that Americans wait on the edge of their seats for the results of the caucuses.

One would think with all the tension built up around the Iowa caucuses and the early primaries that their results would be a springboard for some kind of action ? harder campaigning or increased activism on the part of the voters. Yet what results is a fear-inspired paralysis in which many Americans choose not to vote for their desired candidate for fear that he (or, this year, she) has no chance of winning.

This approach to voting is not unjustified if it is known with relative certainty that a certain candidate will not win, and it often makes sense when it comes to some third party candidates ? as in Mr. Ralph Nader.

It should not, however, have such a powerful influence over the strong Democratic or Republican candidates whose losses are quickly presupposed by the results of one or two primaries. John Edwards, for instance, has already become a ?wasted vote? for many. His inability to be among the top two Democratic frontrunners has made him a premature castoff. So, many that support him are already geared up to vote for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. This type of thought process on the part of citizens is a regression during the time in this process when we have the most flexibility and room for change.

Instead, many Americans do the real-life equivalent of the typical horror movie maneuver of hiding in the same closet where everyone else has just been murdered. Instead of making an effort to push for a desired candidate, we allow a small portion of the population (i.e. Iowa) to dictate our votes. So we let the slasher corner us, even though we still have a chance to run away.

While this method of strategic voting obviously doesn?t apply to everyone, it is a stream of thought prevalent enough to be dangerous, especially for both the well-informed and the poorly informed voters.

A sizable chunk of constituents care almost exclusively about party association and a few trigger issues; their attitude is along the lines of ?I don?t care as long as it?s a Republican.? Thus, if the consensus of the nation is ?Republican candidate X is most likely to win,? then these party-association voters will be most likely to vote for that candidate.

Some who are uninformed vote for the candidate perceived as ?most electable,? and the informed voters do the same for fear that voting for the candidate they truly desire will be a waste of a vote. The result is that we are placed into a cycle of voting in which we use a previous pattern ? the early primaries ? rather than our own beliefs as a template for the election.

In our passivity, we fail to truly take advantage of the system of democracy on which we so pride ourselves.

Talking of the Iowa caucuses as if they are the definitive representation of what will happen on Election Day demonstrates the helpless approach many voters are taking toward the election. Our votes count, but they won?t benefit us if we don?t even give them a chance to do so.

Hannah Shtein ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in philosophy and religious studies.