Full Metal Lunchbox

 
Yesterday was municipal Election Day (aka. the primaries) in Illinois.  In presidential election years these elections are an exciting exercise in choosing Democrat and Republican party presidential candidates who have already been chosen by earlier elections in other states.  The other three out of four years are generally a yawner because local government in the Chciago area is still a one-party machine.

But this particular off-year primary was special to me because it was the most retarded election ever!

Let me tell you about it.

First of all, the Democratic Machine(tm) put up their lamest slate of candidates, even by Illinois standards and even where there was real competition.

Let's start with our governor, G-Rod.  Ever faithful to the rule that the biggest faker politicians have the poofiest hair, Governor Blagojevich has already once before given gullible voters the false impression that he is some kind of reformer.  "Ha!" I say.

In absence of real leadership, the governor occasionally comes up with pie-in-the-sky ideas along the lines of "let's send all of our pre-schoolers to Mars" or "free healthcare for all newborn kittens."  This guy is so lame he actually makes me long for our last governor, who is probably about to go to prison.

Unfortunately, the only slated competition from another Democrat was (surprise) a machine politician.

Then there's John Stroger, our Cook County Board President.  I don't even know where to begin with this guy.

For those of you not from the area, Cook County is kind of like a giant jobs program for people with connections who are looking for easy work or have small-time political ambitions.  Can you believe our county government employs more than 20,000 people?

The king of this patronage empire is John Stroger.  Ambitious from the start, Commissioner Stroger cut his teeth in the 1980's by being the only black politican to offer early support to Richard M. Daley, who has returned the favor ever since.  But even Daley--the most successful and beloved corrupt Chicago politician in 40 years (going back to his dad!)--realizes that Stroger has gone too far and accumulated too much power.  While Daley is a new-style Chicago politician (corrupt but reform-minded) Stroger is old school, and has fought against clean government for most of his carear.  So even though Daley endorsed Stroger, he all but outright campaigned for the other guy (his former chief of staff, another machine politician).

Stroger has managed to build a major cult of personality around himself.  The signs with his name on them that dot almost every single front lawn in my neighborhood remind me of the statues of Joseph Stalin that one used to see across the old Soviet Union.  The guy even had a hospital named after himself!

Anyway, I could go on and on, but I wont bore you any further with additional insight into our Borg-minded local leadership.  Suffice it to say, there wasn't one good candidate on the entire slate.  I had to resort to my fallback of writing in Carol Mosley Braun as a write-in candidate whenever possible.  She deserves another chance at some kind of elected position, especially compared to the clowns we've got.

For me, it wasn't just the candidates that made this year's vote particularly retarded, but the election experience itself.  In my precinct, the vote was held as usual at our local community center on the corner.  You really have to be a local to find this place.  Only one small sign out front designates the building as a polling place, and the view yesterday was obstructed by about a dozen school busses parked for the church across the street.  I pity anyone who just moved to the neighborhood and was looking to vote for the first time.

If that wasn't bad enough, the front door to this building was locked.  I had to wait around for someone to let me in, and I saw a number of other potential voters give up and go home.  The only sign on the front door read "no public washroom."  Nothing to indicate a polling place except for the hidden sign out front.  (Ironicly building staff did allow me to use the mens room.)

The vote was held in the basketball court (also no sign) and was staffed this year by the most confused bunch of misfits ever.  As I was sent from table to table, given conflicting directions, and generally turned around like I was playing some big game of Twister, I felt like I was back in Asia again.

Even the actual act of voting was retarded.

To prevent the kind of mistakes and outright fraud from the old punch card system, this year many counties in Illinois rolled out new electronic voting machines.  But not where I live!  In Cook County, or at least in my precinct, the reformed voting process took the form of a paper ballot where you select candidates by using a standard issue ballpoint pen to write an X next to each candidate you want to vote for.  Yeah (sarcastic tone here) no possible mistakes here.

The final indignity came when I presented my ballot to the election monitor whose job it was to insert the ballot into the ballot machine.  "Let's have a look at this," he said, as he actually started to read my ballot to see whom I had voted for!  Sensing my unease, he quickly looked away and inserted my ballot into the reader.

But it was too late.  

My faith in local government is now completely dead.




On a brighter note, here is a cute snapshot of Holly, caught snoozing under a blanket on the sofa.

As democracy around me crumbles to dust, I am at least comforted by the face lickings and/or rambunctious barks of my pug dogs when I return home from work each day.