Yes, People are That stupid

The Palin Name Game post below this was just a primer on how stupid people can be. Today in my fair city I was Warden of a very gemutlich little precinct. A bunch of elderly ladies and me checked in the 345 people who managed to remember it was a primary and at the end of the night when we had to tally up the write in vote we found, yes, invevitably the Green Voter who wrote furiously "abstain" in all the sections available. And the Green Voter who deliberatly wrote illegible four letter words (don't know what they were, but they were four letters), and the Democrats and Republicans who wrote, variously "Mickey Mouse," "Charlie Manson" "Any Honest Politician" and a host of other names out of song, lore, legend and nightmare in place of the actual candidates. I knew this would happen but g-dmn its irritating. Who is so angry, and so weak, and so stupid that they feel driven to make a political statement by essentially throwing a tantrum of the floor of the voting booth and ...what? The eighty year old clerk and I have to stay an extra half hour to wipe up your furious drool. For the same amount of energy and a much higher return on investment you could have called up city hall or your representative in congress or the senate and reamed them out for an actual infraction or a real problem.

To all the "wish there were a third party" posters out there--here in my fair city we have lots of third parties--and plenty still waiting to raise enough support to get on the ballot. At this election we had Greens and Working Families and they were too disorganized to even field candidates at all. 17 packets of fifty votes each printed and delivered to my precinct alone for Working Families and not *one* working families voter actually showed up to cast a vote. Meanwhile, waiting in the wings we have parties like "prohibition" and even something called (I'm not making this up) "timesharing not downsizing". There are parties that are practically called "my aunt bessies left foot." Here's a clue--a third party is not a viable option if you actually want your vote to mean more than the scrawled "pthhhhht" sound that most of the Greens were reduced to making.

aimai