Happy Democracy Day!

Yes, it's election day again, don't everybody celebrate at once. Being an off-year, it's mostly local elections: here in Somerville we have various aldermen and aldermen-at-large to vote for, while down in Boston there's a fancy-pants mayoral race and an eight-way city council run-off to keep the fans interested. Elsewhere in the country, there are some actually important races to watch.


New Jersey Governor
Millionaire Senator John Corzine (D) is leading in the polls, but the margin is pretty slim. It's a good thing i cut my nails short because biting them is a bad habit.


Virginia Governor
Tim Kaine (D) is the Lt. Governor and he's been fighting long and hard against Jerry Kilgore (R)'s evil smear tactics. He has a slightly higher lead than Corzine's but I'm pretty sure Kilgore has God on his side (and a supervillain's last name), so I guess we'll see. This one would be pretty sweet, stealing a huge red state a year before the midterms. My fingers are very crossed.


California and Ohio Ballot Referenda
Among the various crap on both of these ballots are votes on redistricting plans. I don't know much about the California one, but Ohio's would give the power to redraw Congressional districts (usually done after the diennial census) to a nonpartisan panel. Up til now, it has been done by the politicians in power at the time--a surefire recipe for corruption and hard-to-oust incumbents.


Vote if you live in any of these places and if you don't then call people who live there and tell them to vote and that Democracy is fun. If you can't do any of that then at least play "Electioneering" really, really loudly.