General semantics, an intellectual discipline mostly devised by Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950), encourages us to look into the meaning of the words we use and recognize when we use one word to mean two different things, including when the word has two meanings because it's referring to the same object at two different times. For example, "Congress" means the legislative body of the United States, but "Congress" means one thing if you're using it to refer to Congress in 2012 and another if you're using it to refer to Congress in 1948 (the 80th Congress of electioneering fame).
One problem my centrist friends face in this election is to form their opinions about Mitt Romney. Mr. Romney, as governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007, promoted government-mandated health care, increased fees and the gasoline tax, closed tax loopholes, opposed imposing restrictions on abortions, and banned assault weapons. Mr. Romney's positions on these issues are different today. Thus the problem: are Mr. Romney's supporters voting for his positions of this campaign, or of the positions he advocated ten years ago? Mr. Obama's supporters do not face this problem, as his positions are generally the same as what he advocated in 2008; their question is whether he's sufficiently achieved his goals in his first term as President.
General semantics offers a solution through what it calls "extensional devices," including one that recognizes the problem underlying my "Congress" example. Words can be tagged with the time to which they refer, so that it's clear that "Congress(1950)" and "Congress(2012)" mean different things.
I suggest that we print Mitt Romney's name on the ballot twice, once as "Mitt Romney (2003)" and once as "Mitt Romney (2012)." All the votes would count toward his total. He, and we, could then see whether Mr. Romney (2012) is in fact an improved and more popular version of Mr. Romney (2003), or whether the oddities of the Republican Party's nominating process have imposed upon him an unplanned obsolescence.