We got a phone call a couple of hours ago from a real live person, reminding us to go vote tomorrow and making sure we knew where to go. I forgot to ask if the caller was from MoveOn or not, though. My bad.
And yes, we're all set for tomorrow. We're walking distance from the polling place, which is a plus. Coming from NYC, driving to go vote feels a little unnatural to me. (So does driving to synagogue, but that's a different issue).
San Mateo uses electronic voting machines, apparently. This will be my first experience with them, and I can't say I'm happy about it. I don't think this deep-Blue county is likely to be subject to Republican shenanigans, but I may ask for a paper ballot anyway.
One of the many tasks I dealt with this weekend was going over the various state and county propositions on the ballot. When we first moved to California, I would approach each one with an open mind and weigh them carefully to decide whether each was an idea worth my approval or not, but in the ensuing years, I've come to believe that the whole proposition system is deeply flawed. These days, I approach all ballot propositions from a default position of "No" unless I think that there's a damn good reason to vote otherwise.
Four propositions made the cut this year -- 1E, 86, 87, and 89 -- although in two cases (87 and 89) my support is pretty soft. I still might switch to "No" when in the voting booth. The rest of the ballot goes straight Democratic, although I'll be holding my nose when I get to Bustamante's name.
I do not know what the House and Senate will look like this time tomorrow. I'm reasonably confident we'll finally have Speaker Pelosi, but only barely. I do not think the Dems will take the Senate. We most definitely will not have the veto-proof majorities in both houses necessary to push through much of what we want to accomplish. But so long as we can at least take one chamber of the Congress, we'll be in a position to put the brakes on some of the worst impulses of this administration and start implementing some oversight onto past excesses.
That's a good start.
And 2008 is not all that far off anymore. I just hope that the Hillary juggernaut doesn't suck the life out of the process. We need more debate, more voices, and more options, not less.
