I Voted!

First time I ever waited in line to vote, but it only lasted twenty minutes before I was in. So that wasn’t too bad. And the fact that there was a line so early in the morning certainly couldn’t be a bad sign, especially given how totally liberal my neighborhood is. And last Friday, I saw an even longer line for early voting at my local grocery store, so I’m hoping that’s a good sign that people are ready to throw the bums out.

Voted straight-ticket Dem (as usual), which probably means that the machine selected a hardy choice of rightwing extremists ready to ship me to the Gulag early spring. No honestly, I had no problems with the machines (that I know of); which very well might be a reflection of the fact that I live in Texas, where they want to make sure that our votes actually count. After all, Texas is the biggest state that matters, so it just makes sense that we have more influence too. But my biggest problem was that many of the minor races didn’t even have a Dem in it, so I had to individually pick the Libertarian, just to show some sort of opposition to the Republicans. Texas Democrats really need to do something about that, when one of the “third parties” is fielding more candidates than the second one.

Oh, and one piece of great news: I apparently have a real representative in Congress again. Yeah! In case you haven’t noticed, I never blog about local politics, because I don’t really pay attention to them. But ever since Tom DeLay’s gerrymandering hi-jinks, my slice of Austin got redistricted to a longtime San Antonio Congressman 80 miles away, who is your typical pro-torture Republican. So to my surprise, my ballot today had my old congressman Lloyd Doggett on it instead of the pro-torture bum I had been stuck with. Apparently they redistricted again this year, and I once again have a Democrat to represent me in Congress. Woohoo! Miracles never cease.

I guess this is a sign that I should at least do a cursory review of local politics occasionally, as I probably should have known about this before today. To be honest, I had thought there was something wrong with my voting machine, but didn’t complain as I’d rather have an invalid vote for a Democrat than to waste my vote against the Republican. Call me partisan if you want, but you can’t call me stupid…well, except that I didn’t know who I was picking for Congress, which is kind of stupid. But that’s just because I only focus on national politics; you know, for the sake of my loyal readers nationwide.