It’s Primary Day here in New York State, and I’m in a bit of a quandary as to whether I want to bother with it, but I suppose I will. It’s a good opportunity to how many of the old people manning the polls croaked since last November, and if nothing else, I want to get some practice on the new ImageCast ballot-scanning voting machines. It’s the first election of any sort for me (ever) without my good old friends the lever machines (which were good enough for my parents, damn it), and since I doubt there’ll be much of a line, it’s a good opportunity to get acquainted with the new system. Not that it should exactly be difficult, but, as we all know, change is bad. I’m not sure these things even give you a chance to verify your selections. You mark the ballot, and then stick it in the shredder scanner, and off you go. Not that you could tell anything was happening with the lever machines, of course, but it felt like you were voting when you slammed that big old stick back and the curtains snapped open. Now I guess you go to a table with a urinal privacy screen around it and mark your ballot with a “special” pen (hint: it’s a Sharpie).

As far as who to vote for, there aren’t many exciting races. Though I don’t really feel like a “Democrat”, I’m registered as one (you have to register one way or another here in order to get a voice here in NY), so I’ll have to vote in the Democratic primary, and there aren’t really many interesting races. Katrina vanden Heuvel seems to feel entitled to tell me who to vote for AG. No offense, Katrina, but I don’t recall asking for your opinion. The Working Families Party seems to concur, though, so I reckon I’ll vote for her candidate anyway – Eric Schneiderman. Since my vote is typically the kiss of death, I reckon that means he’ll lose, plus Kathleen Rice seems to be the one with all the money and the teevee commercials. I honestly don’t know much about either one (except that Kathleen is a nice Irish-Catholic girl – single with no kids, though, so you know what that means – who went to Catholic University, and, for all I know, may very well have lived in the same dorm room I spent my DC summer from hell in, back in ’06), though that I’m guessing that I could count the number of times either one of them have been north of Westchester on one hand, and odds are they think the most prevalent crime in Upstate NY is cattle rustling.

There’s no option in the Governor’s race, as Andy Cuomo has that locked up. It’s unfortunate, because I don’t like him, and I think he’ll be very bad for public employees and organized labor. Not as bad as either of the Republicans running, though. That’s a close race, and it’ll be interesting to see which one of them wins (Loser Lazio vs. the mope from Buffalo, Carl Paladino). At any rate, come November, I’ll be voting for perpetual Green Party candidate, Howie Hawkins.

Oh well, I guess I better go study my ballot options (which, of course, is code for “shop for tractor implements”).