It’s Student Government Association election time again, the most exciting time of the year for the student body. Well, besides the 80 percent of the student body that doesn’t vote.

Still though, that’s 5,300 votes! But I mean, when you think about the people who do vote, a large chunk of those encompass friends of the candidates (so maybe it’s more like 4,000), people in those parties (3,000) friends of those people (500) and so on. So for the 14 or so of you out there who are actually interested in the SGA and looking to make an informed decision this year, instead I humbly present Rob Gindes’ Uninformed Election Guide 2010.

The STARE Party. The STARE Party is made up of student activists with a fancy acronym. I’ve harbored a bitterness toward acronyms ever since my Rob Excited to Attain and Relish Dinner campaign turned me into a laughingstock. STARE actually stands for Students Taking Action to Reclaim our Education, but all it ever does is get that OneRepublic song, “Stop and Stare,” stuck in my head.

It is fielding a presidential candidate named Natalia Cuadra-Saez, who, according to our own Alissa Gulin’s excellent reporting yesterday, is “a Puerto Rican-Chilean-American, a Latino-LGBT-Native American rights activist, a Spanish-and-English speaker, a church-going history lover and a wild-card candidate.” As a straight, Anglo-Saxon male, I feel offended. When can we get someone in office who represents me? I’m tired of being repressed.

Your Party. Headed by my personal nemesis, incumbent SGA President Steve Glickman, Your Party boasts a wealth of experience doing stuff you never heard about during this school year. Depending on who you ask, the party either brings a wealth of knowledge from an already successful term, or they should all be tarred, feathered and run out of town for costing students billions of dollars, and our mothers should cry tears of sweet, sweet sadness for the pitiful and shameful job this year’s administration did.

Steve is a cool guy. Is he good at his job? I dunno. Whatever. But Your Party’s logo reminds me of the Burger King logo, which makes me hungry. Hungry for … quality student representation? Nah. Hungry for burgers. I’ll be excited to see whether his burger-heavy platform wins out in the end, because he’s going up against …

The SKYY Party. Now here’s a party that must have known I was writing an election guide, because it shamelessly stole its logo from a popular brand of vodka. Because when

I think vodka, I think politics, and when I think drunkards, I think people who I want to be in power. And if there’s anyone who can undo the year of depression and loneliness brought onto us by the headless horseman of the apocalypse that is Steve Glickman, it’s people who make their mark by standing up for moderately priced spirits.

Their presidential candidate is current SGA Vice President of Finance Andrew Steinberg, and he seems like a nice guy.

Look, I’m not voting for vodka (I’m more of a Jäger guy myself), I’m not voting for STARE (I’m shy and don’t like eye contact) and I’m certainly not voting for Your Party (whoever the hell “you” are). So if you’re looking for the smart choice this election season, vote for … I don’t know … let’s say, Pedro.

Rob Gindes is a senior journalism major. He can be reached at gindes at umdbk dot com.