2023 - No office sought

I have run for a variety of high level political offices including US Congressman for Ohio District 09 (2018,2020), Mayor of Lakewood (2019) and Cuyahoga County Executive (2022).  It was a good experience but I have deduced that American elections are rigged.  

Even if the election process were not corrupt, then fundamentally the republicanism system is rigged towards popular people and popular ideas which may not be the best for a community, state, or country.  One cannot even get on the ballot unless a significant amount of signatures are collected which requires popularity, strategy, mobility, and often hiring employees or a company to collect them.  An Independent candidate has virtually no chance of acquiring the obscene amount of signatures necessary to appear on the ballot.  Furthermore the elections are rigged towards candidates who are either wealthy or connected to wealthy donors who support marketing for that candidate.  The media provides manipulative marketing for candidates they prefer and ignores those they don't like.  

When it comes time for the actual election, operatives use tricks to sway the vote count to their side.  They could just be changing the votes with the computer and we'd never know.  There is really no other explanation for why some people occupy these positions of power.  There is not one individual in any level of the government that represents me or would even talk to me.  It generally looks like those that are installed as elected officials are gross and the dumbest that the people they preside over would accept. 

I am open to running for office in an election with real votes that are hand counted and recorded for auditing.  I am also prepared to take territory and govern a newly designated area around Lake Erie if the US were to collapse. 

(*The staff at the Cuyahoga County Elections Office are all upstanding and helpful individuals.  These claims are in no way towards them but to our election laws which favor candidates of the two major and comprised political parties while deliberately hindering independent candidates and to the corrupted computer systems which count the ballots)