Tuesday, October 7 – 3:15 P.M. (CT)

WWE wants you to Smackdown Your Vote in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, and they also want you to pay 99 cents to vote for the Cyber Sunday match stipulations.

If you want to do your part to insure that Steve Austin is the special referee the main event between Chris Jericho and Batista, it will cost you 99 cents (standard text messaging rates may apply). If you want to help Honky Tonk Man get his chance to put the Honk-A-Meter to rest, it will cost you another 99 cents (standard text messaging rates may apply). If you vote once for every match stipulation on this show, you'll end up dishing out $5.94 (standard text messaging rates may apply).

Wait, there's more. If you really, really, really, want to see Goldust wrestle Santino Marella, you can vote up to 10 times for an individual match stipulation for only $9.90 (standard text messaging rates may apply). Of if you really want to sound off and cast 10 votes on all six match stipulations, you can do so for the low, low price of only $59.40 (standard text messaging rates may apply).

At then at the end of the month, you can dish out another $39.99 (standard cable fees and taxes may apply) to order the Cyber Sunday pay-per-view. If you vote 10 times for all six match stipulations and then order the pay-per-view, it will cost you a grand total of $99.39 (fees, taxes, blah, blah, blah).

By the way, I must point out that I'm the anti-Rainman when it comes to math, so the margin for error on those figures I just posted is like 120 percent. That being said, congratulations to WWE for coming up with a new way to bleed the fans dry. Are they trying to make up for the money that the old man pissed away in that million dollar giveaway ratings stunt?

It's a free country (only Americans are allowed to vote according to a note that Devin Cutting just sent me) and if you have nothing better to do with your money than vote for match stipulations, more power to you (can I interest you in a $5 subscription to the Prowrestling.net Member's website for you, your grandmother, your cat, and your pet goldfish?). I'd rather put my money in the hands of the guys behind the Enron scandal than hand it to WWE for the right to vote on a match stipulation, but maybe that's just me.

I feel for the people who answer the phones at WWE Headquarters because their lives will be hell next month when they take countless calls from pissed off parents who get their phone bills and find out that Teenage Johnny went really apeshit and voted 10 times for every stipulation on every cell phone in the house.

If WWE makes huge money off this promotion, then someone from the United States government should follow the company's lead. I'm not suggesting the government should force citizens pay to vote in elections, but I think WWE has stumbled upon a way to help boost the U.S. economy.

I guarantee that at least half of you will set the alarm early on election day so that you can get up and cast your vote before work. You don't do this because it fits nicely with your schedule or because you want to be among the first people to vote. You do it for that little "I Voted" sticker that lets everyone in your office know how civil minded you are.

You'll strut around the water cooler like a peacock. You'll nod and smile at the other people who sport their "I Voted" stickers. You'll engage in conversations with those people about how crowded the polls in your area were. Best of all, you get to spend the entire day looking down your nose at the Commie pricks who didn't get out of bed early to rock the vote like you did.

Hell, I'll get up early to vote so I can wear that sticker all day even though I work at home. Those stickers have serious value. According to wikipedia (so it's probably wrong), 122.2 million Americans voted in the last presidential election. My uneducated guess is that at least half those people would pay ten bucks for their "I Voted" stickers. Using my borderline mentally challenged math skills, that's $611,000,000 in money generated for the government.

Better yet, they could create the super deluxe "I Voted" sticker that tells people you not only voted, but you were among the first 50 million people to vote and pay a special $50 fee for a special gold standard edition "I Voted" sticker. Hell, they could even put Shelton Benjamin's face on the sticker since the government would have WWE to thank for all the extra revenue the sticker fee would generate.

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