Today is the day of the Massachusetts State Primary, the third of this year’s 4 elections. (There are 4 in Massachusetts towns, at least. I think Cities use a different schedule for their municipal elections.) The purpose of primaries is to whittle down choices such that we as a society don’t end up with two people with similar views going against one person with opposing views, leading to the possibility that the the one person would win when people were in fact okay with either of the two people with similar views.

Now, something like Approval voting or some other more complicated system of voting might be a better system in general. But for now, we have parties and primaries. It may not be the best system, but it’s not horrible.

The previous state primary in 2006 was quite interesting for my district, as there were 5 Democrats and 2 Republicans running for State Representative. This year is much less interesting, with no contested Republican races and 1 contested Democratic race (but not contested for State Representative).

But, if you’re in Massachusetts, I encourage you to look at your ballot and vote anyway. Feel free to write people in. There might even be more contested races in your district.

This morning, I voted in the presidential primary. While generally there are a few more elections on a ballot than the ones you hear mostly about (since some positions have one or zero candidates), I didn’t realize that there would be some on this ballot. In addition to an uncontested race for a “man on state committee”, and a race with no candidates for a “woman on state committee”, which in retrospect shouldn’t be too surprising, there were thirty-five write-in spaces (and no listed candidates) for “town committee”. I’m now wishing I thought to write my own name in on one of the lines.

This quite possibly was the first primary election in which I took part. (In 2004, the Republican primary wasn’t very interesting. It’s also possible that the ballot was quite different because I was living in Worcester. In 2000, I was not yet 18.)

So, in general I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the race for Massachusetts Governor. I figure that the governor doesn’t really have much power anyway, since Romney vetoed a bunch of stuff during his administration, which is really the most you could hope a governor would do, and they pretty much all got overridden anyway. So, I think that the governor here is primarily just a ceremonial position that can try to set direction, but doesn’t really have much power. (I could be wrong on this, but it’s just how it looks from where I’m sitting.)

So I didn’t really pay attention to the primary race. Now that the final candidates are selected, I’ve started taking a closer look. As far as I can tell, they’re all trying to cut taxes, and they’re all socially liberal. Now, perhaps they’re all fiscally conservative and socially liberal to different degrees, but right now to me, it looks like all the candidates, *all* *four* of them, are *libertarians*! Or at least, they’re all much more socially liberal than I want. I just don’t get what exactly is the choice I’m supposed to be making?!

Voting for someone who believes that it’s okay for babies still in wombs to get killed by their parents just goes against every fiber of my being. (And that’s not the only issue, it’s just the one that sticks in my mind the most.) Should I try to find a candidate who may be better than the others on some issues, and vote for them, in the hopes that maybe my vote might make a difference somewhere? Or do I just write “None of the above” on the ballot and thereby throw away my vote in disgust?

It just makes me very sad and angry.

But at least, as I started out saying, hopefully the governor doesn’t have much power anyway.

I’ve been somewhat saddened lately that while a majority of the country may share my overall political views (which for the purposes of this post I’ll define by voting for Bush), in the state that I live in, people sharing my views are definitely in the minority. However, I was recently encouraged by the fact that in the Spring, we’ll be moving to Charlton, and that Charlton was Bush’s best town in MA, winning 64% of the vote there. So, I’ll be in the majority nationally and locally, but just not regionally.

Well, somewhat on a whim, we decided to go over ‘s place for late-night election-watching. and were there when we got there, but got scared off and left shortly thereafter :). The watching was just kinda in a background as we (, , Pezz’s dad, and me) chatted about all sorts of political matters.

It looks like Bush’ll probably win. CNN isn’t calling Ohio yet, but Fox News is. And with Bush having a 120,000 vote lead with 97% reporting there, I tend to think that he’ll probably win that state, and therefore the presidency. That makes me very happy.

Although, it is kind of disappointing to not have a single contest on my ballot go the way I voted for. But, I’ll live.