Election Day

Today is Election Day here in the U.S.A. It is not a presidential election year, so we are voting for state and local folks.

For the first time in a long time, I have a choice of representation on the ballot in my local supervisors' district. I have a choice in some of the state races - the ones at the top - but not delegate or senator. The incumbents are running unopposed.

I have never missed a vote. Even if I have no choice, I vote anyway. Sometimes I write in names when people are unopposed (because I can). At the very least, it should let the winner know not everyone is happy with his or her performance. Additionally, it means incumbents won't get 100 percent of the vote, not that 100 percent of the registered voters will have voted.

We have rain and it's growing colder by the hour, so I bet the turn out is abysmal. Will we even have a 30 percent turn out of voters? Stay tuned.

When you feel your vote makes no difference, I am not sure what you call it, but I do not call it democracy. In fact, I wear solid black to the voting both, to protest the death of democracy. Not that anybody asks.

Locally, the Republicans have a stranglehold on most of the seats. I expect my county will go Republican; it has for years. Folks seeking lower taxes moved in in the 1990s and brought with them their desires for more government services somehow paid for out of thin air. We've had some real winners on the local governing board in the last 15 years. They represented somebody, but they did not represent me. I was a news reporter at the time and had to keep my opinions to myself.

Why aren't there more people willing to run for office? For one thing, it's not a regular person's game anymore. Unless you're a millionaire plus, you may as well forget it. Even at the local level, you have to spend thousands to get what you're after. For another, the election process has become as vicious as vultures pecking out the eyes of a calf. If you have the least little crack in your life's history, the opposition will break it open until your guts are strewn all over the floor.

Who wants to deal with that?

Twenty years ago, the candidates for the local board ran as independents. And then the political parties crept into it, and all was lost. Once that game started, there has been nothing to do but sit back and watch the dive into divisiveness and derision. No amount of sanity is going to save us now.

So go vote. I vote to honor the women who lived before me, who died so that I might exercise my right to write-in the name of a candidate, even if that person will only receive the single vote I cast. It is your civic duty, even if you're as jaded and as regretful as I am over the way the process is handled today.

Go vote because it is the right thing to do. And don't hesitate to write in Yosemite Sam if you don't like the choice of candidates.