Election Daaay!

In the state of Virginia, we had a few elections. Like any good procrastinator, I did more or less nothing to learn about any of the candidates until pretty late in the game. OK, really late in the game, like... today. Now, that doesn't mean that I haven't been paying attention. I simply have been doing my preliminary assessments purely on flyer design, TV commercials, and the best campaign phone number I get called from (I decided it was 888-888-8888). Not really the best, but I've just never seen all the same number before outside of the movies (555-xxxx, etc.).

So I did some cramming on actual issues considering we do live in that pesky thing called a representative democracy. So as it turned out after all the issue digging and soul searching (about 30-45 minutes =)) I probably could have not read a word or seen a flyer and voted the same way. Now this doesn't particularly float well with Smurf of course, going party line and all. I did feel a bit better by researching and attempting to develop a feel for the candidates. But personal experience and those two annoyingly unsatisfying parties definitely make for decent tie-breakers. Take Leslie Byrne. She seems nice enough. I spent more time thinking about the governors race and our district state delegate race than the LT. governor (so little that as I was writting this post I had to go back and check out who she ran against; William "Bill" Bolling).

~~~ by the way: Note to the Washington Post. You don't have to put Bill as his quoted name like its Jimmy "no legs" Hoffa. His name is William, we can take it from here folks ~~~

Okay sorry about that. The real confession here is I didn't really read up much on the race at all. I looked at Byrne's picture and got sidetracked by the fact that she is the Chief Financial Officer of Byrne Consulting (which her husband runs apparently). First of all, if my wife runs a company I am NOT going to be the CFO unless it stands for the Chief Fun Officer (there are a few more to think of here). Second of all, I guess I didn't really get much out of the fact that she been some sort of Assistant professor @ Mt. Vernon College and is the CFO of a family owned business. Big whoop! Anyway at the end of the day I didn't have a clue what she was all about...and all I know about Mr. Bolling was that his name was really "Bill".

So what happenned in the voting booth? Well, tie goes to the runner, and Leslie Byrne got the vote. Call it brand loyalty I guess. Should I have simply not voted? Probably, seeing as she lost anyway. But I do feel like a cheated a little bit. But why was voting for a Democrat simply because she's a Dem. the end of democracy? As inadequate and incomplete as the Democratic party has been for me, the Republican party pales in comparison. So the Democratic solution was my 80% solution. Nothing revolutionary, nothing original, but at least I know what I'm getting. Oh God, or political process in America has turned into the fast food industry!
~Gama