Last Days

The election is in three days. I spent an inordinate amount of time organizing people for election day, and now discover that I spent no time planning what to do over the long weekend. Surely there must be some voters left in the city.

I got my monthly cell phone bill, between Jim and I we made over 1500 minutes of calls. That doesn't count the time I spent on our home phone. Amazing.

The Democrat ran an article this week that addressed the voting record of candidates, to wit, whether they voted regularly in elections or not. What I couldn't get through the head of the reporter was that it gave the home field advantage to candidates over 50, because it reported only elections after 1988 for every candidate. This permitted showing candidates over 50 with a high turn out rate for the polls, because their voting record for their teens and twenties was omitted. For candidates in their 30s, their voting records looked terrible, because it included the early years of their voting, which for 80% of the voting public, is usually pretty terrible (this is why polling stations near the University usually have 18% turnout in primaries). For example, I haven't missed an election since my early thirties, but the paper showed a 66 percent turnout rate. One of my opponents, who also hasn't missed an election since his early thirties, had a 98% turnout rate, because they didn't start counting until his mid-thirties. The Democrat's reporter told me sanctimoniously that they stood by their methodology. In 30 years, this won't matter, but for the time being, older candidates are favored because their early voting years are ignored.