No Stout About It: Brackets should play larger role in America

People who know me well are aware that I have three strong beliefs: One, Sparta is the worst band in the history of the world; two, fewer people should be freedom-hating commies; and three, everything in the world should revolve around brackets.

I've loved brackets since I was about 7 years old, and if it weren't for hatemongers in Congress, I'm sure I would marry one someday.

Right now, the people of America have an on-and-off relationship with brackets. We allow them into our homes during March and we fool around with them for a few weeks, but once April hits, we promise to call and never do until next year.

It's not very popular to use brackets to depict the playoffs in the professional sports, and it's pointless to use them for college football, so March Madness is the only good time of year for bracket-lovers such as myself.

Brackets need to take a bigger part in American everyday life. If this doesn't happen, we run the risk of becoming like some godless Scandinavian country. They don't have brackets in Norway - only fjords.

What no one has realized yet is brackets can be used to fix the biggest problem we have in America (well, second biggest behind too many ugly people wearing too little clothes), and that is the lack of participation in presidential elections.

I'm pretty sure that more people in America fill out March Madness brackets than vote in presidential elections. This is a problem, people.

How can we fix this problem? Change the current ballot into a bracket.

Instead of everyone choosing one candidate for president, everyone would be given a bracket with 65 possible candidates on the list. The play-in game would probably be between the Communist and al-Qaida representatives.

Just like the NCAA Tournament, the bracket would be divided into four regions based on location. Each political party would be given a certain number of candidates it could put in the bracket.

Then, a special bipartisan committee of political science experts would seed the candidates, and the bracket would be revealed live on C-SPAN. Then, Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala can act like Dick Vitale and Digger Phelps and break down the bracket.

"Paul, I really like Libertarian Michael Bednarik over Democrat Al Sharpton in the 5-12 upset."

"No Tucker, you're wrong. Sharpton can make a deep run in this tourney and actually knock off the No. 1, John McCain."

Everyone will get a few days to study the bracket before they go to vote. Then, each person must fill out his or her bracket in its entirety. Candidates get one point for each person who picks them to win in the first round, two points for the second, four for the third, up to 32 for being picked as the champion.

This would be great because not only can you really help candidates you like, but you can also screw over the ones you really hate by having them lose in the first round.

Then, after all the points are tallied, the winners will be revealed in bracket format live on television. All Americans would be glued to their TV sets to see how close their bracket came to the actual results.

I guarantee at least 80 percent of Americans would vote, and we could all thank brackets for furthering democracy.