errorlevel and I went out canvassing today for John Laesch, one of two democratic nominees for congress in Illinois's 14th district. (Yes, this means he is running against Speaker Dennis Hastert.) We didn't get to talk to many people today, as a lot of people weren't home, and it started raining about 20 minutes in. But, the few people we did get to talk to had some wonderful insights.

Mr. Laesch came to the first two places with me, to make sure that I was comfortable with what I was doing, while errorlevel stayed in the car. The first person we talked to really intrigued me. She is a woman who works for the Houghton Mifflin company. We asked what the most important issue for her was this election, and she said the No Child Left Behind Act. She said that sometimes she feels bad, because the only thing NCLB does is make her company money. She said that she has children, and they get tested so much without really learning anything besides what is on the tests. The teachers are forced to teach to the tests rather than what the children really want and need to learn. She said that we need something like NCLB, but that instead of testing the children so much, we need to be testing the teachers to make sure their children are learning. As a child development major in college, I found this very intriguing.

The next gentleman we talked to said that his biggest issue was the war. He said, "we never should have went in there in the first place." If this is how the voters felt, then why did the party not listen to us when they voted yes for the war?

The third person also intrigued me quite a bit. When we asked him what his most important issue was, he threw me for a loop. It wasn't any of the major talking points (health care, education, war, economy, etc. etc.). When asked he simply said, "trust." I think this man embodies the disenfranchised voter. The voter that is simply tired of the lies, the deceit, the mud-slinging. This is the voter that is yearning for change that simply hasn't come. He was an elderly gentleman, and he said, "You can tell by all my gray hair that I have voted in quite a few elections. I have never felt that our country was in a worse place than it is today." This a man who saw Viet-Nam, Watergate, and the Red Scare. I think that says a lot about where our government is today.