I’m a day late on this (must’ve been that whole 4/20 thing bong), but the 2016 NY State Primaries are over, with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton emerging victorious. I (much like the Trump spawn) was unable to participate in the primary election because I’m not registered to a political party that makes much of a difference. I was once a registered Democrat, but long ago decided I didn’t like the “party” all that much so I registered with the Working Families Party. But then they endorsed Governor Snotball over Zephyr Teachout a couple years back, which really pissed me off. So I decided to switch to the Green Party. Frankly, registering as a Democrat where I live is kind of a joke. None of the local races are ever contested (hell, we’re often lucky to have more than one candidate running in the general election, let alone the primary), and by the time the national races get to NY, everything’s usually already been decided (at least, according to the media) by the white folks in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The last time I voted in a primary was way back in 2008 when I quite reluctantly voted for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama (my first choice was John Edwards, which shows how smart I am).

Now, in NY, you’d think it would be fairly simple to change your voter registration. And I suppose it is, but it takes forever. After printing out and failing to mail in a paper form, I eventually filled out the form (you can’t just fill out a “change” request either – you have to fill out the full voter registration form as if you’re a new voter) at the DMV website. And I waited. And waited. And I checked my registration on my county BOE website, and it never changed. And eventually I kind of forgot about it until I decided maybe I should register as a Democrat so I could vote for Bernie.

Now, I don’t know exactly when Bernie made his intentions known, but I think it was around last May. So I should have done it then (though to that point there was no indication that my previous change had gone through, so I didn’t know if it was gonna work anyway), but I didn’t and much to my surprise, by the time Bernie officially launched his first campaign ad in November, it was already too late. If you want to change your party affiliation for the purpose of voting in the primary here in NY, you have to do it six months ahead of time.

So, my bad. I think this is pretty stupid, personally, but there are a vast number of stupid voting rules here in NY (that include things like the color of the ink used in the nominating petitions, and the fact that if the election district changes mid-street – as they do – and there’s a single signature from the wrong district on the petition, all the signatures get thrown out) designed to keep the little people without a vast organization and tons of money (and lawyers) from running for any office higher than Highway Superintendent.

I’ve heard people say that if you’re not a member of a party then you don’t have any right to choose the party’s candidate, which sounds good. Except just registering with a party affiliation doesn’t make you a member of the party either. So by that logic, you should have to be a card-carrying, dues-paying member of “the party” in order to vote.

But in the shitty system we have here, you only get two actual choices (usually between Kang and Kodos), so it seems kind of unfair to me that if there’s somebody running in either party that you’d like to see become president, you ought to be able to vote for that person to become the candidate. And there are of course states with open primaries – I just don’t happen to live in one of them.

I also don’t live in Canada, where it looks like they’re about to legalize pot. So maybe I need to change that.

Oh, there’s always the argument that people are going to scurry out to the polls to vote for somebody they think will make for a weak candidate on the “other” side. Frankly, I think most people are too lazy to bother with that. At least, I don’t think you’d get enough people to make much of a difference in a national election (though I know there’s been isolated incidents of Republicans digging up homeless people or whatever to run as the Democrat in some local races – but I don’t think that’s quite the same thing).

I at least think I ought to be able to go online and change my registration instantly. If you want to lock that function out a week or a month or whatever ahead of an election, then OK.

But, whatever. The rules are the rules, and they aren’t gonna change.

Anyhow, I found this NY Times map of how the candidates did in New York pretty interesting. Surprising, even. Not the Republican one (NY Republicans love them some Trump), but the Democrats.

Green is Bernie, and blue is Hillary, and you can see that Bernie won in all the rural areas – areas which are typically considered very conservative. Not exactly what you’d consider a bastion of Commie Pinko sympathizers. Even in the counties that Clinton won Upstate, her margin was a lot lower than she got downstate (and Sanders had huge YUGE margins in some of the more rural areas).

The other thing I thought was interesting was this table:

Now, granted this is only the committed delegates and doesn’t include the card-carrying, dues-paying, party elite types (who will eventually vote whichever way the political winds blow), but still. Clinton appears to have a less than a 250 delegate lead over Sanders at this point. Which seems odd, because I keep hearing that he should quit. That seems like telling a team that’s down by 10 points in the third quarter that they should just give up and go home.

I mean, need I remind you that Syracuse was down by 15 points with 9:33 to go in the game against Virginia and came back to win and earn a trip to the Final Four? No, I didn’t think so.

So hopefully Bernie will at least be able to get some some of his ideas into the Democratic platform (not that that means much), and hopefully Clinton can actually beat Trump (who the GOP establishment is suddenly warming up to) in November. ‘Cuz I hate moving, and I’m not sure Canada wants an old fart like me moving in anyway.