Voting report

I voted today. I, personally, love vote-by-mail, although as a traditionalist, I also miss the ritual of going down to the precinct voting place and all that goes with it. Basically, I love voting. As Howard Dean once said,

"Democracy requires participation. If all you do is vote, you barely get a passing grade."

(paraphrased from memory of a speech he gave last year in Vancouver, Washington which I attended, so don't get all uppity if I got it wrong.)

I have a general rule, and a corollary and a recently-added special case that follow from it: first, I tend to vote against the incumbent. Rarely am I satisfied with the status quo. There's always another politician that suits my views of policy and agenda better. It's just the way it is. I have sometimes voted for the incumbent, but it hasn't happened often.

The main corollary for the general rule is that if someone is running unopposed, even if they're not the incumbent, I don't bother voting. Why? If enough people opt out, that might mean they don't get in, if the position requires a certain percentage of voters. And if not, I'm sure they'll get at least a few votes and mine won't have much impact.

The special case has happened since the 2004 elections, and the emergence of Howard Dean (see, there was a reason I quoted him) as a force for motivating the grassroots progressives. In a general election, I will vote for the Democratic candidate. Sure, I would have rather had another nominee than John Kerry, but in a contest between Kerry and Bush there was no hesitation. Kerry would have been light-years better than Mr. Twenty-Nine Percent, Nixon-without-a-brain, George W. Bush.

Don't ask me what I'll do if Hillary Clinton gets the nomination in '08. I'll take that as it comes, thankyouverymuch. For now there's the mid-terms to deal with.

There were lots of local races to deal with in Oregon's primary, and one of them as I was making my way through the voter's pamphlet and deciding between the choices was the position of Multnomah County Auditor. Two candidates, and neither of them were incumbents. Odd. One worked in the Auditor's Office, though, and the other was a college professor and a state representative. So, I voted for the state rep/professor.

Moving along, the next position on my ballot was for Metro Auditor (Metro is... um... a quasi-governmental agency that oversees the Oregon Zoo and waste management in the Portland area). And we had two nominees here, too... the incumbent Auditor... and...

The current Multnomah County Auditor! Was this a lateral move on her part? Sheesh. I couldn't rightly vote for either one of these clowns.

So I wrote myself in. Heh.