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Four years ago, I was in the same place I am right now. You see, I'm undecided.

I hemmed and I hawed about it, shuffling from one decision to the next, trying to pick the best possible choice out of the options.

So, yeah, I'm undecided - at least, about a Halloween costume.

Well, sort of.

You see, four years ago, our country was in a very similar place. In October 2004, the big buzz was on which way the undecided voters were going to lean. They were a powerful lot, those people who couldn't make up their mind.

That's why I put together the ultimate "Undecided Voter" costume.

That was the year of the Red vs. Blue eruption. It was the first year after the dreaded hanging-chad fiasco. It was a year when most people felt like they were picking the lesser of the evils for president, rather than the right guy for the job.

So how do you make an undecided voter costume?

Well, my solution was to buy a cheap red shirt and a cheap blue shirt, cut them in half with jagged edges, safety-pin one red half to one blue half, and then cover the two halves with bumper stickers and buttons from the Bush and Kerry campaigns, which I picked up at the state Democratic and Republican headquarters in downtown Denver.

Then, I topped it off by wearing a pair of jeans with red and blue stars embroidered all over them, a pair of earrings shaped like question marks, one red shoe and one blue shoe and a red hat (of course I wore a hat!) with blue question marks stuck on it. As a prop, I carried a "ballot."

It was something that wound up winning first place in a costume contest at the Denver Press Club. (In the tradition of old-school journalists and the Press Club, which always has a fully stocked bar, I won a beer cooler.) And I'm still proud of that costume to this day.

Now, I may have to resurrect that costume for Halloween 2008, but with Obama and McCain stickers.

What's funny is that in both elections, the top race wasn't one that I was undecided on.

This year, while there are a lot of the contests and ballot issues that I have a pretty strong opinion about, there are a few that I still am somewhat undecided on. If I had to vote today, I know which way I'd probably go, but I'm possibly persuadable on a few things.

Although the debate last week in Craig may not change the local outcome of the election, it did cause me to pause on several things. I'm now considering voting for a (local - not national) Republican, for Pete's sake. The key word there, though, is considering. And a couple of the ballot issues I have flipped and flopped on.

So, until Nov. 4, I will do my homework, read up on the issues and finally make up my mind for good on which boxes to check.

Right now, though, I guess I am undecided.

Maybe it won't really be a costume, after all :

Jennifer "Jenni" Grubbs can be reached at 875-1790 or jgrubbs@craigdailypress.com