Decisions, decisions. The day(s) to pick a favorite presidential candidate almost are upon us. Are you ready?

Not me. Not even close. Maybe you think it’s a good thing that the South Carolina primaries come so early, so we can influence the races. I wish I had more time to study the candidates, to watch some true colors surface.

Hillary or Barack? Edwards or Richardson? Oh, yeah. Richardson’s out.

McCain or Huckabee? Romney or Rudy? Are Thompson and Paul still in?

I’m as undecided as they come.

Republican or Democrat? I still have not made that basic decision. That makes me a rare American, I’m sure.

I pick the person, not the party when I go to the poll. Over the years, I have voted for elephants and donkeys. Sad to say, too often I have voted against one candidate instead of for the other.

And as I survey the large 2008 field, I can see strengths and weaknesses in each candidate.

This much I know: If I can’t even make up my mind yet about which primary to vote in, much less which candidate to vote for, how can our Anderson Independent-Mail editorial board tell you whom to vote for?

So we won’t. As we decided in 2006, we are electing not to write endorsement editorials this year. That goes for national, state and local races.

That seemed to be a popular decision two years ago, although a few readers let me know that we were abdicating our responsibility. We merely are listening to readers who say they don’t like to be told whom to vote for. We will, however, publish editorials that look at some races analytically.

We tried to raise the bar for news coverage of elections in 2006, and we are shooting even higher this year. We will attempt to schedule as many candidate forums as possible. We will try our best to focus on issues instead of personalities.

And we will use our Web site as a medium between candidates and voters. If candidates choose not to take advantage of interactive features that we can offer, that’s their prerogative, but would you support someone who doesn’t want to connect with voters?

One feature we can offer on IndependentMail.com would be polls, but they wouldn’t be scientific, so how useful would they be?

I’ve gotten pretty skeptical about so-called scientific polls in recent weeks. How can their forecasts, even on the eve of voting, be so far off? Are voters that fickle?

My theory is that people now look at polls negatively, as if they could be another way to influence an election.

Speaking of influencing an election, it would be a crying shame if the next two weeks become a crying game in South Carolina.

Shed no tears for me as I debate the merits of the candidates who will be listed on the primary ballots and one “candidate” whose name I’m tempted to write in.

Oprah, anyone?