Today we voted in our fourth election in twelve months.  The first was June of last year and I don’t remember on what we voted.  The second was in November with the presidential candidates and a bunch of hotly contested propositions.  The third was in March that involved local city council and other local positions.  This one involved voting for the congressional candidate to replace our current representative who was appointed to the Obama cabinet.  We also voted on some complicated State of California budget propositions that ranged from setting aside a rainy day fund to borrowing five billion dollars from future lottery profits to restricting legislative pay raises.

In L.A. City there was an election for City Attorney.  It was a runoff because no one had won a majority in the last election in March.  LAPD Chief Bill Bratton endorsed one of the candidates back then and in a commercial stated in his thick East Coast accent how he would be “leading the chaage” and voting for him was a “no braina”.  Unfortunately, it was quite a “braina” for the electorate and that candidate only won between 30-40% of the vote.

Getting to the polls was also a bit complicated.  It wasn’t at the usual elementary school north of us but at what seemed like a senior center to the south and west of us, though still in our hometown.   We parked at a place near a liquor store we thought was close to it and walked around.  We thought a motel-like building might be it, but it turned out just to be a motel.  We walked past another building and an auto body place until we saw a building with the correct address number.  But it was a Wonder Bakery outlet and not a senior center.  We kept walking and found the polls on the west side of the same building.  A sign above matched what was on our sample ballots.  There was only one person ahead of us voting.  We voted and they gave us regular “I Voted” stickers.  Our ballots were numbers 99 and 100 so maybe that means a few other people voted before us at least.

The next election may be in July if none of the congressional candidates wins a majority in this election.  We hope one of them does because we’re sick of voting.

oday is Election Day and it will be the third election in which we’ve voted in the past 10 months.  The first one was in June 2008 and I honestly don’t remember anything we voted on for that election.  Maybe there were some school board positions or county measures, or city council positions.  I remember it was at a nearby elementary school.  There were no other voters there when we arrived in the late afternoon, just poll workers who looked very glad to see us.  I believe our ballot numbers were 2 and 3 or something very small like that.  I guess we were just the second and third voters to show up.

Of course, it was a different story the second time we voted in the past 10 months.  Last November nearly all the voting booths at the same elementary school were full, though there wasn’t a line and we got done fairly quickly.  Our ballot numbers were in the 500’s.

This time it’s all local positions.  The mayor is running unopposed; five people, including the incumbents, are running for two city council seats; and the city clerk and treasurer positions each have two people competing.  We received our sample ballots and made our decisions based on the candidates’ written statements, mailings, and newspaper editorials and endorsements.  One candidate didn’t have very good quality control with his mailing and the picture of him on the flyer looked like he needed to wipe his nose.  That ruled him out.  Overall, I expect this election to be more similar to last June’s than last November’s, but I hope our ballot numbers are higher than 2 and 3.