The other day I realized there’s only a month for me to make an important decision.

To be more specific, I have one month/four weeks/30 days to make my decision on November 4, Election Day.

Yes, one month pending and I have yet to make a decision whether I’ll be voting for Barack Obama or John McCain.

This will be the third presidential election I’ll have participated in and by far this time around has been the toughest to make a decision.

While each presidential election is important, in my opinion this upcoming election is one of the most imperative because of the situation our country is in now.

I think most Americans (Democrat and Republican) can agree any change in the presidency will be a welcomed change. Yes, a Republican president has gotten us into this mess, but does that mean McCain will put the U.S. in a deeper trench or Obama will wave his hand and save us all?

In my opinion, maybe so or maybe not this is after all a presidential race, the virtual honeymoon of all political races…promises, promises, promises.

As an undecided voter, I’ve been trying to weigh both McCain and Obama and attempting to dig up the real facts on both candidates.

In all honesty I could care less what church-quack Obama is affiliated with or how many houses McCain owns and all the squabbles between the “experts” in the mainstream media that pursue.

At this point in the game, with the clock sound ticking loud and clear, I just want hard facts on their positions on the issues facing our country.

Of course, on this fact finding mission I’ve found it hard to locate detailed information in a sea of bias opinion.

I’m typically a huge consumer of CNN, CBS and other various print and television media outlets. For a quick overview of news, I typically watch CNN, but since the 2008 presidential race began I’ve had a hard time watching campaign coverage on that particular channel. While CNN is typically level when it comes to stories, when it comes to politics they tend to lean toward the left.

Then there’s CBS, the channel I look to for more in depth “fair” coverage which I didn’t quite get while watching the tail end of the Vice Presidential debate on Thursday night. Whoever thought of tapping into the Nielsen ratings for undecided voters should get the first, free one-way ticket to Mars.

So what am I supposed to do, watch Fox News? Ha, that will be a cold day in Hawaii.

Print media is no different, those looking for a good liberal spin read no further than the New York Times and for conservatives it’s the Washington Post.

In the meantime I guess the old adage, “If you want it done right, you got to do it yourself,” will be applied in my case.

I’ll be relying on the fact that I find on my own in order to make the best decision. All the while I’ll be thankful I live in a country where I have the right to vote whichever way I think is best.

Amanda VanDerBroek is a Staff Writer for the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald. For comments and column suggestions email: amanda.vanderbroek@r-cnews.com or call (252) 332-7209.