Voting 2005

I was always taught that vot­ing was a sacred duty and that the bal­lots are nec­es­sar­i­ly secret. My par­ents would nev­er tell me whom they vot­ed for when I asked, and I got the impres­sion that when I became enfran­chised, I’d be expect­ed to keep my trap shut too. The Welsh in me is going to pre­vent that; and since this elec­tion cycle has been a big joke for the most part, I can’t real­ly blame the Plain Deal­er for putting sto­ries about teenage blog­ging and syn­chro­nized foot­ball bap­tisms on the front page, above the fold, the day before the elec­tion. You can’t do any­thing if there is no news. This elec­tion I’m much more excit­ed about the issues on the bal­lot than the can­di­dates. That said, here is how I’m plan­ning on vot­ing:

May­or:
I’m vot­ing for Frank Jack­son, not because I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of any­thing he’s had to say at any time, ever, but because, as an incum­bent May­or, Jane Camp­bell has had an entire term in office to seal up her re-elec­tion, through a vari­ety pol­i­cy and lead­er­ship means. Her weak­ness as a can­di­date has already been apt­ly demon­strat­ed by the lack of con­fi­dence most peo­ple I’ve met have had in her. I vot­ed for Tri­ozzi in the pri­ma­ry and prob­a­bly would have gone with Lynch oth­er­wise, I thought their ideas were a bit stronger and they seemed a lot less inter­est­ed in blovi­at­ing and more inter­est­ed in actu­al inter­ac­tion. Jack­son could very well be just as tire­some as the cur­rent may­or, but Cleve­land needs change and until we get some lead­er­ship that incites it, I’m going to keep vot­ing for change in the lead­er­ship.

Ward 13 Coun­cilper­son:
Well, I’m vot­ing for Joe Cim­per­man. I’ve met Mr. Cim­per­man sev­er­al times, almost been hit by his Sat­urn once [I was­n’t pay­ing atten­tion] and most impor­tant­ly, I have no idea who this Lau­rel per­son run­ning against him is. The clos­est thing I’ve had to inter­ac­tion with Lau­rel is pick­ing up a dirty and wet piece of lit­ter on the side­walk in front of my apart­ment and see­ing that it was a fly­er from her. Plus, Joe has a con­dor.

Judge:
I’m not vot­ing for any­one for judge. I under­stand the rea­son­ing for vot­ing for judges, but there is no way I can tell which judge is wor­thy of my vote because I nev­er see them cam­paign­ing or hear any­thing about their cam­paigns. If you don’t give me any­thing to judge, you wan­na-be judge, I’m not going to judge any­thing. I could vote for Lynn McLaugh­lin-Mur­ray since she lives right down the street from me, but then, so does Roc­co Whalen. NO VOTE FOR YOU, JUDGES.

Issues 1–7:
I’m vot­ing yes to all of these, not because I’m one of those vot­ers who is just going to go all yea or all nay, but because they all sound pret­ty rea­son­able based on my research. Also, my mom would strip the skin from the bot­tom of my feet if I vot­ed against a devel­op­men­tal-dis­abil­i­ty levy.