The results from Tuesday's mid-term elections describe no mandate, but rather a roar of indignation. Results were so mixed, there was little that national analysts could read into them save former House Speaker Tip O'Neill's adage: all politics are local.

Yes, some Tea Party candidates won. But some Democrats who were widely expected to lose managed to hold on. The voters were angry. The Democrats lost the House, as is to be expected in an off-year election. But there was no unified, decipherable message coming from all voters.

One thing that can be said now about the American political system is that Independents are ricocheting back and forth at lightning speed. Two years ago they went overwhelmingly Democratic. This year they boomeranged back to the GOP. What that says to me is what I've been saying for years, which is that we need a major, complete and thorough realignment of issues.

We are a more sophisticated nation than we were, for example, when the so-called Greatest Generation of World War II were young adults, coming back from the war and raising families who would become the baby boomers. Back then, they relied on radio reports and local newspapers. Today cable TV news networks scream at us from our living rooms, and store windows. We do Web searches from our 'droids and news updates are everywhere. If one wants to research the most obscure of issues, there are tomes of up-to-date information instantly available online.

So this means the partisan divisions between Republicans and Democrats no longer make sense, and people are simply not going to toe a party line because they no longer are obligated to, nor do they have any personal financial reason to do so. The one exception is partisan pundits or lobbyists on TV masquerading as journalists, who really want a job with the next presidential administration.

But for the rest of us, issues don't neatly divide into partisan platforms as they did a half-century ago. Just because you're pro-environment doesn't mean you want to pay for health insurance for the person next to you who can't afford it. Just because you're anti-war doesn't mean you're willing to accept higher taxes. Just because you're for lower taxes doesn't mean you want church doctrine turned into state or federal laws that govern how you live. And just because you're religious doesn't mean that you want someone else's religious beliefs to bar you from marrying your gay or lesbian partner.

The one thing that seems to unify large groups of voters is bigger versus smaller government, which is at heart a debate about how many and what types of services you believe government should provide. Either you need more from the government and don't make much money: therefore confiscatory taxes are of little concern to you, because your income is not much affected by them. Or, you want overall to pay lower taxes and have government do less because you need less by way of government support.

But neither party is all one or the other. The Republicans say they're for lower taxes. And President George W. Bush lowered taxes. But he launched two expensive wars and ballooned the size of social spending at the same time. It will take generations of Republicans 'acting right' before voters will see them as fiscally responsible once again. Hence, the popularity of the Tea Party. Meanwhile, the inclusion of the religious right (or wrong, as I call them) in the GOP base is alienating low-tax moderates who don't want religious mores guiding their laws.

Democrats think government's job is to pull people out of poverty, instead of giving people some very basic tools (to wit, a good education) and letting them pull themselves out of poverty. But then they lump in health care for all, a cleaner environment and civil rights, all of which are important issues, but none of which necessarily align with government qua charity.

The resounding message from Tuesday's elections is, it's time for a major partisan realignment. But neither party wants to hear that.

Bonnie Erbe is a TV host and writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail bonnieerbe@CompuServe.com.

Think of long lines of people standing in the rain, voters huddled in cold weather with paper coffee cups in their hands. All of that is so yesterday.

We're moving away from being a nation of voters all of whom turn out to vote on one particular day, to a nation of voters who wait for a ballot to arrive in the mail, fill it out at home and send it back without ever having to venture out to the polls. All this and on different days, some as far in advance as a month before polls open.

It may not sound like a huge change. Mail-in voting certainly makes it easier on people already struggling to balance work and family life. But it's actually having an effect not only on how campaigns are run, but also on political polling. Eventually this change in voting patterns could gain sway to the point where it shifts the path of future election results.

Just this past June one California county delayed certification of election results after receiving more than 12,000 mail-in ballots the day after the election, according to the Los Angeles Times. The ballots had been forwarded from one post office to another and candidates threatened lawsuits if those ballots were not counted in advance of certifying elections. Both early voting in-person and by mail are available in California.

Having lived through the national debacle of Bush v. Gore in 2000, in which election results were delayed by recounts and court appeals for more than five weeks beyond Election Day, no one wants to repeat that excruciating experience. But mail-in voting certainly raises the possibility that such delays could become commonplace.

It's already changing the way campaigns are run and TV ads are bought and placed. Stuart Rothenberg of Congressional Quarterly writes: "More than 30 states allow voters to cast their ballots well before Election Day. Early has begun in Arizona and starts Oct. 11 in Illinois. Early voting in Indiana starts 29 days before the Nov. 2 general election. In Wisconsin, it's three weeks before Election Day. In Florida, early voting starts 15 days before the election."

Oregon, for example, went to an all mail-in ballot in 1998, after having toyed with mail-in voting in earlier elections.

Early voting has changed the arc of campaign planning and lowered the value of late TV spots and late campaign developments. Consider the 2008 presidential election. Republican nominee Sen. John McCain came out of his convention in late August some five points ahead of then-Sen. Barack Obama. Wall Street crashed in mid-September and independent voters deserted the GOP. President Obama won that election handily, but my personal belief is that never would have happened if the economy hadn't turned topsy-turvy with voters blaming outgoing President George W. Bush and his would-be successor.

Consider how recent revelations in California's gubernatorial race may have changed votes. Republican Meg Whitman was running even with former Gov. Democrat Jerry Brown. Then a former domestic worker went public with information proving Whitman's husband read a government-issued letter explaining to the family someone on its domestic staff had issues with her immigration status.

Changes in voting patterns driven by mail-in ballots are also throwing obstacles in the path of veteran poll-watchers. Each individual polling firm can skew poll results by how it handles trends among early balloters. According to the Washington Post, when conducting surveys some pollsters now ask people if they have already voted and if the answer is yes, those persons' answers are most often thrown into the category of "likely voters."

So while early voting is overall a net positive, mail-in balloting may not ultimately be the solution. Perhaps states such as Oregon should change over to the California method, in which most voters go early to the polls to vote and they have more than one day on which to do so.

That would ensure that all votes could be tallied on Election Day, rather than subjecting elections to the vicissitudes of the postal service and delays.

Bonnie Erbe is a TV host and writes a column for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail bonnieerbe@CompuServe.com.