A recent comment by satirist David Sedaris made me ponder something about the election. Here’s what Sedaris had to say about undecided voters:

“I look at these people and can't quite believe that they exist. ‘Are they professional actors?’ I wonder. ‘Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?’ To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. ‘Can I interest you in the chicken?’ she asks. ‘Or would you prefer the platter of sh*t with bits of broken glass in it?’ To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked."

On the other side of the political spectrum, conservative radio talk show host Neil Boortz wrote an article titled, “To The Undecided Voter,” in which he pleaded with those who’ve yet to settle on one candidate, saying, “the least you owe your country is to try to base your final choice on some substantive facts.”

All joking and appeals from either party aside, time for the undecided voter is running out. There are now just 11 days until the 2008 presidential election. And yet, according to the current RealClearPolitics average of national tracking polls, roughly 7.3% of the nationwide electorate is still undecided.

Across the battleground states of Indiana, Florida, North Carolina, Missouri, Nevada, Montana, Ohio, and Virginia, the number tends to be a little lower. That could be bad news for John McCain, especially with the election so close. With dwindling numbers of undecideds and widening gaps between he and Barack Obama, his chances of picking up enough of them to give him an edge disappear. That means his only hope would be to somehow force people who’ve already decided on Obama to change their minds. And McCain probably thought winning undecideds was hard.

Those prospects begin to look even worse for McCain when you consider the record pace at which early voting is already taking place. In North Carolina, for example, 65% of the more than 750,000 who’ve already gone to the polls are Democrats, as opposed to just 35 for Republicans, according to a report by Politico.com. And if the early voting continues to favor Obama, as many analysts are predicting, that could be disastrous for the GOP. Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller says he expects just 40% of his state’s ballots to be case on Election Day. And he’s hardly alone in that.

There are no more debates. There are no more marquee Sunday morning talk show appearances. The endorsements of Obama by Republicans Colin Powell and Scott McClellan are probably the last major revelations of support you’ll hear about (unless you count the earth-shattering announcement that Opie, Andie Griffith, and the Fonz are all backing the Illinois Democrat). Barring any late, October Surprise-like revelations, we’ve probably learned just about everything we’re going to learn about the candidates.

In short, their continued “undecided” status kind of begs the question: “what are they waiting for?” Maybe there are some people that are legitimately torn between the two candidates, but for the most part, McCain and Obama are about as different as two presidential candidates have been since the early 1990s. So it would be hard to believe that one person could have such mixed feelings. (That has to make you wonder whether or not these individuals will even show up on Election Day…but that’s a discussion for another day.)