Should One's Faith Influence Their Vote?

It should only take the last eight years in the United States to indicate that voting based on "faith", or any spiritual values is not a good idea.

George W. Bush rode into the White House on the coat-tails of many good well meaning voters who consider themselves Christian.

These fine citizens believed our president-to-be when he touted himself as a very God fearing man, intending to uphold all that is right and just, but as a nation based on separation of church and state(supposedly), he began pushing his faith based initiatives, while beginning a bloody war that has cost the United States thousands of lives and billions of our tax dollars. An action that solved nothing, and made this nation no more safe than it had been before.

Those who voted for Bush, fearing that gay people would be allowed to get married, stem cell research would result in more abortions, and sinful chaos would reign supreme if he were not elected, instead procured a president who turned his back on solving global warming, allowed a national tragedy (9/11) to go unanswered, and continued tactics that no longer had the country's best interests at heart.

We would hope that any leader we elect is a decent, upright human being. We would hope that he or she is humane, empathetic, and believes in the ultimate good of mankind.

We do realize that these officials should answer to the citizens, and cannot go it alone, but claiming that God has enlightened him/her on how to run a country, come on now! This is not only wrong, it is scary!

We elect these people to work on our behalf, and to do what it takes to bring resolution to problems. What church they attend, claim to attend, or do not attend, should not matter; rather, they should be judged by their actions. Actions that speak louder than mere words.

Martin Luther King asked that his children be judged by the "content of their character".

Is that too much to ask of a presidential or any political candidate?