I didn't even get an "I Voted" sticker

[psocoptera]

Well, I voted. I was expecting to feel kind of sick about it, but I guess I was resigned enough to it that it was almost a relief just to have it over with. Yeah, I guess I just consented to all of the horrible things Kerry is going to do to this country and others over the next four years - but that's the *best* case scenario. Sigh. I ended up voting a straight Democratic ticket, if you can believe that. There was only one other contested race, a state rep seat, in which I not only voted for a Democrat, but an *incumbent* Democrat. Entirely for marriage equality reasons, I must admit - "by the power vested in me by the state of Massachusetts" is still *so much more exciting* than almost any other issue, and besides, the (Republican) challenger's platform was basically "you know all the state pork the incumbent is trying to get y'all? I'll get you *more faster*". Which is not really the kind of challenge I can get enthused about. (Although he threw around terms like "laissez-faire" in interviews. So that would be the kind of "market-driven" that supports the Green Line extension? Riiight.)

Anyways, once I had done that, I figured I might as well go ahead and check off all the unopposed candidates, who were all also Democrats, and mostly incumbents. I guess I've gotten (small-c) conservative enough that I would rather have those seats filled under a show of (small-d) democratic legitimacy than have some appointed body take over those functions. So I'm claiming those were votes for the voting process. But they were also all Democrats. If I wasn't unemployed, I would go donate some money to Cato right now...

Comments

[irilyth]

I'm surprised you had so many uncontested races; I don't think I had any, although there was one in which the two candidates were a Democrat and a Libertarian. http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0412/gonzalez.html has the story of a contest like that for a House seat in Florida, which the LP is hoping may drum up some awareness of the party. (I don't think they expect to win, but pulling 30% - 40% of the vote in an election for a Federal seat would be pretty spectacular.)