Voting on the day of blog number 200

It wasn't any sense of civic duty that led us to the voting booth today. At least it wasn't on my part. Every election it seems to be more of a case of voting against someone rather than for someone. Those on the ballot are usually such a pathetic lot.
So that was our only reason for being there - casting a vote against one man and one woman. The woman has been on city council since the majority of the inhabitants of the area were wolves, panthers and bears. Every election she puts up hundreds of pink signs defacing the landscape. That's why we voted against her.
The man is a real piece of work. He ran a full-page newspaper ad pointing out how wonderful he is and listing all his accomplishments. Beside that he ran the most unflattering photo of his opponent he could find. A blank space was her list of accomplishments despite the fact she is the incumbent clerk of courts. That's why we voted against him.
I voted against the issue that would have provided money for policing girlie shows. Not that I intend to visit one of those places but it smacks of Big Brother sticking his nose into one more place. Figuratively speaking, of course.
I'm not sure our votes were counted. After filling in ovals on a paper ballot it was handed to a woman operating a scanner. No matter that she had no idea how it worked, she was operating it. A couple of times she frowned and pressed one button or another, probably the one that deleted my ballot because I voted against the man and woman mentioned previously. It was a secret ballot, so how could anyone know who I voted for or against? Because before putting the ballot into the scanner the woman had to take it out of its folder and there it was for anyone close by to see.
Some people believe that voting matters. I never will until they go back to paper ballots. The electronic system makes it easy to juggle the results the way they did in Cleveland in 2004. When they tally up the score, take it with a large grain of salt.
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The is blog number 200 in well under two years. That's not much of an accomplishment for someone who used to write 250 columns a year plus a hundred or more on sports plus a weekly travel column that ran in numerous newspapers plus sometimes covering other events and writing them up. Those columns were much longer than blogs. When the newspaper's executive editor hired me to do them the editor wondered if I could manage to come up with something to write about five days a week. The only problem was having far more material than I could use. Unless I am seriously tied down with another writing project I enjoy doing blogs. As Jackie says, it keeps me off the streets.

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