I haven’t voted on “election day” in quite a few years.  Sometimes, there is nothing on the ballot to even vote on.  Well, this year being an even numbered year, Texas re-elects everything but President and one of our Senators. (I put myself somewhere between President Obama and Senator Ted Cruz politically.  I recognize the two extremes, but it won’t take much work to figure out which one I am closer to.)

As I voted today, I voted early for the first time at the library. (At the other early voting place, they are pretty sedate.  Before I even signed in today, I was warned to watch what I say to “these guys”.  Normally, I would have rubbed my hands together in anticipation.  But, with the need to be so careful what you say when voting, I felt a little paranoid.  They realized my apprehension and made jokes about knitting and drinking too much coffee.)  As I put my code in and pulled the ballot up, I was all good on the first few candidates.  Out of the first 10, I had a cheat sheet covering 8 of them.  Once I got past the “big” candidates, my cheat sheet lost its effectiveness.  (I tried to do some Google searches to find all of the candidates I would find on  my ballot, but the list was not easily available.)  When struck with this predicament, I fell back on my most basic rule:

If they are of my political persuasion (its a primary election, so my respective ballot mostly met this description) and I don’t know anything about them, I will vote for the woman or the person with the “non-white” sounding name. (i.e. a minority)

There are too many white men in politics!  I believe my party (and the other one as well) would benefit by having a less stereotypical politician.  Our demographics show we are becoming less white, so I used my finger to make the voting booth dial more minority friendly.  I realize my little voting game has losers.  I also realize the whole country wins if my politicians in Washington have more mascots of many different minority groups.