Primary Election Day

Today is the primary election day in California and I am so happy that it’s finally arrived.

Elections in general are a bad, true annoyance coming from my mailbox being stuffed with political mailings that are obscene wastes of paper to an unending series of robo-dialer calls supporting one candidate or another.

This past Saturday I received twelve ginormous postcards that measured twelve inches by eighteen inches. Yesterday I received ten more.

I had six political messages on my answering machine when I got home from school last night. That’s more than I get in some months or even a couple of months.

Things didn’t use to be this bad.

But, we Californians, never ones to rethink outcomes of our votes, decided to have open primaries where the top two candidates in the primary election will appear on the ballot for the general election. That means candidates will mail to everyone, regardless of political party affiliation.

This resulted in mass mailings in open or contested elections.

I live in the 33^rd Congressional District. Our representative is retiring from office. That triggered a field of eighteen candidates for his office. I think I’ve received mailers from each one but I could be wrong. I don’t want to count them up.

My state senate district has eight candidates running for the open office. One of the candidates in addition to the oversized postcard mailing had a postcard sized stuffer in my newspaper at least once a week for the last month. They could have been there longer.

I love living in a democracy.

I just wish our democracy was a just tiny bit neater, had a really healthy dose of honesty, could find a way to reduce the influence of special interests, and was less annoying. I hate seeing on television or reading postcards where a candidate makes promises that he or she can’t keep or have nothing to do with the office. We have a candidate for county supervisor promising to fight job flight or loss in the entertainment industry. There is very little that he can do but it sounds really nice if you work in the industry or have friends in the industry.

Every candidate promises to cut waste in government spending. This has been going on for as long as I can remember. I’m still waiting to see it happen.

Why is it wrong for individuals and corporations to finance measures they support and is right for liberal groups to do the same?

Be well and stay happy.