Civic Duty

I did my civic duty and cast my vote(s) in today’s Primary for three or four useless vagabonds running for various offices in NYC. I always vote. I even try to match the candidates’ avowed policies to my own preferences which is sometimes difficult since a lot of them seem to try to match theirs to mine, without regard to their personal beliefs. I guess it’s a matter of whom do you trust; but, unfortunately, the answer is “nobody.”

Voting in my precinct is easy since the turn-out is always fairly sparse (with the exception of the presidential race last November which was festive). You can fire off a cannon in my polling place there are so few participants. But it’s the American way to bitch and moan about government and then not take the time to vote.

This year there seemed to be excessive vote solicitation without regard to my being already committed to single candidates. You would think when I tell a candidate, or his staff member, that he has my vote that he would have the grace to put a check mark beside my name and not call again. Har-de-har to that! Yesterday the barrage of phone calls (both landline and cell) got to be just this side of sticky and the blizzard of leaflets/flyers/exhortations that fell into my mailbox piled up in an unprecedented, and somewhat alarming, manner. This overload of calls/mail always makes me wonder about any single candidates fiscal responsibility overall. If they send me ten pieces of mail and make seven phone calls asking for my vote is that really a good usage of their time and money? Will this misdirection of funds continue when/if they are elected?

I am also bemused by the fact that our government saw fit to let us opt out of phone solicitations of any kind with the exception of themselves. Ya gotta love it.

But, hey, it makes me feel good and even patriotic to vote. And I await my jury duty summons with aplomb. What a good boy am I.
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Update September 29, 2009: Unfortunately, since no one got a majority of the votes, two of the offices up for grabs needed run-offs. Consequently the barrage of phone calls, mud-slinging television exhortations, ringing doorbells and flyers continued. It really does border on harassment! To top it off, this morning when I went to vote I noticed someone had plastered the windshields of all of the cars on my street with vote-for-me flyers twice; on both the passenger side and drivers side (hiding the registration) and, since they got rained on, they became adhered to the glass and will no doubt require some strategic scraping. What the hell?