Voting

Today my absentee ballot went in the mail. The big races were easy -- John Kerry for President and Joe Hoeffel for Senate. My Representative is a Democrat and his only opponent was from the Constitution Party, so that was a no-brainer as well. The state government races were trickier. The Attorney General race looked close, so I stuck with the Democrat. For Auditor General and Treasurer, I could find so little information to go on that I figured I might as well vote Green. For State Senate, I actually voted for the Republican. I was influenced by the Morning Call's praise of his environmental record, and the Democrat's pro-life comments (I don't take a stance on abortion, but given the small amount of material I had to work with, I took his comments as signalling a larger conservative outlook).

My ballot stands as another data point for the argument that voting is as much about expressing your ideals as it is about getting your preferred policies enacted. Pragmatically speaking, I ought to have voted for the Democrat in every race. But I hate to think of myself as a straight-ticket voter, so I made a point of finding some races where I could support another party.