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I have a confession….

I’m not entirely sure my 11^th grade government teacher would have been proud yesterday.

I voted.  I did.  And have to thank my civic-minded husband for that.  Which is funny, when you consider that both his parents were Canadians living right outside Phillie for his whole existence (and they just became US citizens a couple years ago), and so, he never actually saw his parents vote.  But he is proud of the fact that since he’s turned 18, he has never missed an election, a claim that I cannot make—it was something about moving and having children and I can’t remember what that made me miss one (or was it two?) minor elections.

But yesterday, we voted and dragged along all four kids, to help instill patriotic duty into their souls.  I knew this was going to happen.  That same civic-minded person had mentioned on several different occasions that election day was November 5^th.  So, I should have been prepared.

Still, when he called at 5:00 last night to say he had left work a tad early to vote and that I should throw the kids in the car and meet him, I was thrown into a mild fluster.  “But who are we going to vote for?  I don’t even know who’s running!”  He made some joke about voting the straight party ticket that I did not appreciate.  I don’t want to be a straight-party conformist; I want to be a thoughtful, intelligent, well-informed voter…which, obviously, I am not.  So, I ran to the internet and googled voting guides and the newspaper and Family Research Council… and got nothing.  Well, not literally nothing.  There were lots of responses, but no articles that gave me any information on the judges who were running for election or re-election or what their stances were on anything.

So I abandoned the Well-Informed Voter guise and decided just to appease my husband and try to make a sort-of-in-the-vicinity-of-timely appearance (which is all I ever shoot for).  And I thought that really they ought to have a big list posted on the walls of the voting halls that tell what each candidate stands for, in his/her own words, of course.  Or am I the only person who missed last Wednesday’s voter guide in the paper and only listens to the news as I race to piano lessons or soccer practice?  I guess that is somewhat the purpose of those kindhearted people who stand outside, freezing and handing you loads of information on how great their candidates are.  So, I showed up, stared blankly at this list of completely-unknown-to-me judges or judge-wannabes, touched the screen in touchable, blinky spaces, and pushed my button to vote.

Voila!  Democracy marches on.  I’m not entirely sure that that actually qualifies as voting.  I was just hoping as I made guesses for these judges that all of you are so much more informed and full of integrity and civic-mindedness and stuff and are making a great difference.  Or at least that Dave would vote completely opposite me on some of them, so we could cancel each other out, and then I wouldn’t be directly responsible for the downfall of society.