Primary

I'd been seeing some articles in our local paper about upcoming school board elections, held this morning.  There was a choice of two for our district, who drew pretty clears lines about philosophies ("I'm pro-education" & "I'm anti-tax").

So, after the school bus picked the kids up, I drove to our borough building to cast my vote.  I was greeted by two borough representatives who immediately started talking about the vote, write-in's etc.  I cut them off an asked "Is today just a primary, or is it the final vote?  I'm independent - can I vote today?"

The two men smiled, one of them replying "Today is for the flock only.  People who think for themselves can't enter."

I was somewhat taken aback by the borough representatives saying that, especially while they were assisting with primary elections!  A short discussion ensued on party politics, ending with me telling them "I'll be back when I'm allowed in."

Driving to work afterwards I thought of some of the odd aspects of voting in our country:

• the ingrained party aspect of elections (that our founding fathers warned us against)
• the cumbersome and antiquated method of voting (can't we just have an app for it? Electronic transactions are pretty well understood - we'd could have better voter turnout, less expense, no lines, etc.)
• the ever-growing money influence (I'll write about campaign finance more sometime)

It seems a little broken.  That's a problem for a representative democracy, where voting is a primary characteristic.