I have voted! Yay for me. My ballot was, of course, absentee; it
seemed appropriate, since I feel more and more absent all the time,
and I wouldn’t want to cast my sacred ballot under false
pretenses.
I have voted! Yay for me. My ballot was, of course, absentee; it seemed appropriate, since I feel more and more absent all the time, and I wouldn’t want to cast my sacred ballot under false pretenses. Besides, voting at home has so many advantages: you can sit in a comfortable chair while gazing in despair at the telephone book disguised as a candidate list; you can rant and rave about the quality of your choices and the absurdity of the entire spectacle without bothering other voters; and if committing yourself to actually assisting one of these people to get elected makes you a little nauseous, well, there’s bound to be a bathroom nearby.
It’s a wonderful, exhilarating feeling. No, not the part about having played my minuscule role in the electoral process. The giddy lightheadedness comes from knowing that I can completely ignore all further campaign commercials, phone calls attempting to sway my opinion, news of the latest poll results, and all the rest of the tawdry trappings of this way-off-year election. It’s too late, outta my control, I’m impervious to persuasion; for me the election is officially over.
Well, until the next one when somebody finds a winning reason to overturn the results of this one, whatever they may be. For example, it occurs to me that the ballot this time is so long, and the little tiny chads we in Santa Clara County and a few other places have to punch out are so small, that I’ll bet a lot of folks are going to come close, but not quite hit the right little hole. Now, as we know, the order in which the candidates are listed is different in every assembly district, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a pattern arises in which in each district the candidates with designated little holes immediately above and below those of the major players get extra votes.
So what if it turns out that in every district the randomly-selected candidates who find themselves immediately adjacent to Schwartzenegger and Bustamonte and McClintock (and let’s not forget Gary Coleman) get more votes than they get in districts where their names are nowhere near the big guys? And what if one of the big guys wins by a hair? Maybe we should just plan ahead and turn the electoral system over to the Supreme Court, right up front. It could save a lot of time and temporary uncertainty over who our elected representatives are.
The bottom line here is, this whole megillah is a lot of time-consuming trouble a very short time after we successfully waded our way through the leach field of a regularly-scheduled election campaign. This is distracting us from anticipation of the baseball playoffs, the start of football season, two wars, and that whole Ben and J.Lo thing, which as I think of it sounds like a great name for a brand of premium ice cream. I mean, really – it’s painfully obvious that they shouldn’t make movies together; maybe they should make desserts. “Try Ben & J.Lo’s newest flavor: Not Mint To Be. Available at Safeway.”
But I digress. The point is, the flaming fundamental let’s-get-right-down-to-it point is: Do we really need a governor? At least, is having one worth all this unless he’s a certified wizard who really does us some good? For all the hassle and money and handing Leno way too much embarrassing material, all I can say is, whoever ends up with the job had better be prepared to roll up his sleeves and rock like the Stones or this is all gonna seem like a bad dream.
I expect California to experience a full recovery from everything that ails it within 60 days of the election, or I’m starting a recall petition. And next time I’m voting for Gandalf.
