Fun with the Democratic Process

So today has certainly been the most exciting mid-term election that I can remember. Then again, I don't have a very long memory, especially for things that I spend most of my time hating (like politics). It seems like O'Malley is going become governor. I'm still not sure how I feel about that. Without a doubt I'll be feeling lighter in my wallet, I can't imagine O'Malley passing up the opportunity to increase Maryland's tax burden. On the other hand, I can't really come up with anything I like about Ehrlich. I guess that if O'Malley does become governor, then something good could come of it: Sheila Dixon will become Baltimore City mayor. Not that I know anything about her, but she apparently she might support an ban on indoor smoking in Baltimore City. I really enjoy places where people don't smoke, so I think I would enjoy more of Baltimore City in that case.

Anyway, voting is always fun. The best part being that I can stop hearing about politics and political strategy all the damn time of WYPR. I really wish NPR would cover politics less and anything else instead. The worst part is that there's never any talk of the issues, it's all talk about how the political parties are using popular opinion on current issues to try to eke out some minuscule advantage over the other party.

You know what I think is a strange race? Maryland's 5th House District, where there is a Democratic candidate and a Green Party Candidate, but no Republican. I suppose you could write-in the Constitution Party candidate, but that seems even crazier than the Green Party. Apparently, the Republicans didn't bother because the incumbent is a 25-year incumbent, but I think it's kind of silly that the Green Party candidate is pulling 17% of the vote (with 57% of the precincts reporting).

On computerized voting: it worked pretty well for me. Obviously, I've grown up with technology, but it was really a piece of cake. So much for the news media giving us an accurate warning for technology leading to the collapse of society...looks like they're 0 for 2 if you count Y2K. I don't even want to count all the times they've warned us of the impending near-collapse of society due to identity theft, illegal music downloading, and social networking websites. Oh, and no children have started a nuclear war by accident yet either.