"A Voter's Lament" or "I Voted Today"

I have never missed voting in an election. The big ones are easy. Presidential elections, gubernatorial, Senate and the House; all of these have major campaigns and hopefully they have gotten their ideologies out to the public, (although more likely they have smeared their opponents with attack ads and you are left trying to asses a candidates position by figuring out what their opponents have not attacked them on...but I digress).

However, it is the little town elections, when the biggest race is mayor, or city council, or board of education, that I have the hardest time with. You would think these little dinky elections would be easy, right? I would have too, but they just suck for someone who is obsessed with being involved in the election process as I am.

When I was 18 and living at home, I would get the low down on the candidates from my dad, who was involved in politics at the local level. He would basically get out the ballot in the newspaper and rate each candidate on two categories: Were they an asshole and what issues they supported. I would like to say that the issues won out over assholedness, but I can't. All of his opinions were based on inside information; you really can't rate the asshole level of a candidate without getting involved in city council.

So now here I am, in a different state and screwed. Without my dad giving me the low down, I have to assess each candidate on my own. There is no way I am getting involved with local politics; my civic engagement stops at voting. And the newspaper is no help. There was no platform statements or track records or a nifty color graph charting the asshole level of each candidate. What are you to do?

Maybe I could find someone who had some insights on the local races. Well, I am afraid to say that few people share my civic sense of responsibility. I could only find one colleague who had voted. I asked her about her strategy. She shared my frustration of the lack of information available for local politicians so she came up with a strategy of her own. She said she voted for all women. I think she was working under the assumption that women are less likely to be assholes then men. Interesting theory, but I need to see some evidence to support it.

At the end of the day I still knew nothing about the candidates on my ballot. As I got closer to my polling station, the anxiety level rose. My worse fear was to help put or keep an asshole in office. Is voting blindly worse than not voting at all?

As I pulled into the parking lot of the polling site, I was pretty worried about the implication of what I was about to do and then I had something more than an idea but less than an epiphany. Perhaps it was a brainstorm? I don't know what it was but it felt right at the time.

What occurred to me was that I pretty much have found most politicians to be cloying and insincere. I have especially felt this way the last eight years. The wrong people are getting into office. If this is true than I should vote for only people that would unseat an incumbent candidate. Full shift of power. So that is what I did. I voted for all the challengers. I imagine voting blindly like this would make the founding members of America cringe, but hey what is more American than blurting out an opinion without any information to back it up.

I have no idea if that was the right strategy, voting for all challengers to seats. However, in life I have found that it is almost always right to route for the underdog.