So, tomorrow is Election Day, which first and foremost means I earn a comp day for working, because it’s a holiday for we godless public employees here in NY State. I think the idea is (or at least was originally) that we’d be able to take this day off to make phone calls for candidates or drive people to the polls or whatever. I guess there are probably a lot of state, county, and municipal employees who still actually do that, though I’ve never been one of them. And it’s not because I’m lazy (I am, but that’s not it), but because I have a really hard time calling people on the phone (I hate even calling people I know or making appointments and stuff like that) – let alone going door-to-door. But I’m also not a veteran, and I’ll be earning a day off for 11/11, too.

As for tomorrow, it’s one of those off-year elections where in theory you can make a “real difference” by voting for local offices, but where, in reality, you can’t do shit. At least where I live. We’ve only got a handful of offices up for grabs, and of those, only two are actually contested. And I can pretty much guarantee you the Republicans will in those two because that’s just how it is up here.

Guess I’ll be writing some people in, again.

There are some more interesting races going on in Syracuse (like Mayor, Common Council, etc.) but I don’t get to vote for those.

Here in NY State, though, we have some propositions to vote on. One is on whether or not to hold a Constitutional Convention, which will hopefully get defeated, because if they manage to get one of those going, the rich people will get to buy delegates to it and fuck the people over (and by “the people” I mostly mean me).

The second one is whether or not elected officials who are convicted of a felony (we’ve got a lot of that going on here in NY) should be eligible to receive their pensions. I have a pretty good notion of how that one’s gonna go.

And the third prop eould make it easier for municipalities to fix a road, install public utility lines or add bicycle trails to the Adirondack Forest Preserve, which everybody (including the environmental groups, from what I can find) seems to be in favor of.

In my county, there’s also a proposition to transfer control of the County penitentiary from our County Executive to the Sherriff’s Department. Gee, I dunno. I haven’t been able to find the union’s position on this, which I guess means they at least don’t hate the idea. So, what the hell, I guess I’m in.

It’s a darn shame I can’t just get the ballot ahead of time so I can fill it out and drop it off. I guess I could go the absentee ballot route, but I have a sneaking suspicion they never even bother opening those. At least, not until the election’s long over.

Oh well, at least I know the lines won’t be long.