Matt Meister couldn’t wait for today to arrive.

It’s not that he’ll have a clear picture about who will serve in the White House for the next four years – he learned after the Florida debacle in 2000 that there are no immediate guarantees to determine a clear winner.

But Wednesday, he says, will mean no more robo calls and no more attack ads and no more mailers overtaking legitimate pieces of postage – all of the things that he believes are taking the sense of civic pride out of exercising the privilege of voting.

“It has just become absolutely crazy,” he said. “I can’t imagine that 50 years ago people would have ever predicted that elections would have turned into this.”

And it’s an unusually heavy election year for California voters that are being asked to give their take on everything from a sales tax increase to whether genetically enhanced food should be specifically labeled to whether unions can take deductions from employee paychecks and use them for political campaigns.

With soft money contributions funding Super PAC advertisements in a handful of local races, mudslinging, in the eyes of Cody Little, has become far too prevalent.

The last-minute ad blitz has only intensified the rhetoric on both sides of the aisle and alienated swing voters like Little that don’t have a clear choice before the start of the campaign – a rarity in a state like California which is always shaded blue on the electoral roster and is often ignored by Presidential candidates until they’re on a fundraising blitz.

“Which guy am I supposed to vote for – the one who is being attacked or the one who is doing the attacking?” he mused. “The problem is that it goes back-and-forth. Even if I liked one candidate I wouldn’t like the way that they’re going about things.

“I guess that’s just the way that things operate today.”

It’s not just the races that’ll send people to Washington, D.C. that have taken on a divisive tone.

Four people are currently vying for two Manteca City Council seats – including both incumbents – while 10 people are battling for the same number of open positions on the Lathrop dais.

The battle for the office vacated by Supervisor Leroy Ornellas – who termed out after eight years – has seen hundreds of thousands of dollars pouring in to the coffers of both Rhodesia Ransom and Tracy City Councilman Bob Elliott.

Regardless of the nasty tone that local residents may have been subjected to, Erin McGhee – who is out in California visiting relatives – says that things are completely different here that they are from her home state of Colorado.

She already cast her ballot and found it odd that Presidential hopefuls rarely make stops in the Golden State when there are so many of the crucial electoral votes up for grabs.

Whether her candidate wins or not, McGhee said that she’s just happy that she finally gets to vote in a Presidential election – turning 18 just months after the last Inauguration.

“Every time I turn around back home it seems like it’s either Romney or Obama giving another speech somewhere,” she said. “My cousins tell me that it’s not the same here – that the Democrats always win this state.

“I’m just excited to play a part in it. I’ve voted, but it’s never been in something that’s been quite like this.”