What are they waiting for?  Do they think that one of these days, Obama or McCain will turn to the camera at one of their rallies, and, out of the blue, mention their name specifically?  "And now I'm talking to you, Jane Podunksky at 458 Stillwater Lane in Hackensaw, Missouri.  I know you're concerned about that discolored mole on your left elbow, but I'm sure it's just a benign blemish -- just get a quick biopsy with Dr. Miller within the next few days.  And don't worry, you really will have enough money to get little Eddie that X-Box for Christmas. You'll just need to have Mr. Backenskill clear some overtime for you for about three weeks before and four weeks after the holiday.  It'll all work out fine."  

Or are the Undecideds waiting for more drama, the October Surprise?  Do they think that it will finally be discovered late in the game  that Obama is not really one person at all, that he's actually two midgets stacked together?  Or that McCain was a drug mule for a DC coke ring?  Or are they just a bit confused, wondering why it's taking Jeff Probst so long to call a tribal council and have one of them voted off?

What has enabled these Undecided Voters to get a stranglehold on our Presidential elections?  How can these rubes hold our country hostage as they rub their chins with infuriating coyness?  The culprits are many.  First, we have not had the wisdom to change the ridiculous Electoral College system.  This system would not necessarily always be a bad thing, were it not for its partner problems: the winner-take-all Congressional electoral mechanism and the resulting incumbent racket (via gerrymandered districts).  The winner-take-all system effectively locks out all third parties (and fourth, fifth, and beyond) by consigning all minority political viewpoints to the dustbin of non-representation.  Only the winner gets a seat, with the result being that just two parties are able to monopolize districts. The Dems and the GOP line up along general cultural camps, then gerrymander all of the districts to be "safe," so that incumbents are hardly ever challenged and even more rarely defeated.  This winner-take-all mechanism is also applied to much of the electoral college vote itself, so that entire states become safely red or blue, with all votes going to one candidate, even if the other guy gets 40-plus percent of the vote.  The system itself insures stasis, and the solidly red or blue states are largely ignored as the election approaches.

The media also bears much of the blame in the rise to power of the Undecided Voter.  Certainly the electoral mechanisms themselves place all of the excitement on swing states and Undecideds, but the MSM (Mainstream Media) actually enhances the dramatic nature of the situation by obsessing on polls, the quick-turnaround gotcha news cycle ("Did Obama make a mistake yesterday in describing X as just another version of Y?"), and all of the other ebbs and swells of the horse race.  Let's face it, the MSM is just plain lazy when it comes to reporting the facts (see Bob Somerby's excellent site, www.dailyhowler.com, for a steady skewering of the MSM).  They would much rather spend their money bringing in banks of pundits to sit around the studio and spout off their impressions about what's going on, as opposed to sending reporters out to actually research facts, claims, and conditions on the ground.  Partisan blowhards make for better TV than actual in-depth analysis.  This creates an atmosphere where opinion is the most important thing about elections.  How do these candidates make me feel, what do I think about what I just heard this morning? Was that last speech a home run or a yawner?

When impressions and gut feelings become the core of the election, it makes sense for the Undecideds to sit and wait until the last possible moment.  They want to hold out for every particular campaign event to unfold, so they can feel confident that they have the right frame of mind when they get into the voting booth.  Maybe Biden or Palin will say something stupid on the eve of the election, and that's what I'll take to my ballot-marking.  Maybe it will come out that Cindy McCain tortures butterflies in the basement of one of her mansions.  Whatever.  We're left with a kind of perfect storm of electoral idiocy, and the Undecideds actually get rewarded for their ignorance and shallow fickleness.  Everything comes down to a shimmering subjectivity, a collective agreement to treat what should be a boring-but-serious policy discussion as just another piece of infotainment, like the status of Lindsay Lohan's lesbianism or the Cubs' chances of finally winning the World Series.