New Thing #344: Yet Another Election

I'm pretty proud to say that since becoming eligible to vote almost half my lifetime ago (yeesh) I've participated in most elections. It was hard at first because I was voting by absentee ballot as a registered voter in New York living in Massachusetts, and I might have missed some non-presidential elections because of that extra step in getting the paperwork.

Once I became a full Massachusetts resident, I've been a regular voter.

But I've never exercised my democratic right as much as I have during this calendar year.

Election Day might have been the only time this year I didn't actually have to vote.

There was nothing going on in my area.

But every other day of the year there's been some kind of political action.

It started when President Obama tabbed Senator John Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Early in the year there was a primary, and then in June the election to fill Kerry's Senate seat.

The winner of that seat, Ed Markey, was a member of the House of Representatives from the Fifth Congressional District, which includes Framingham.

So since that election there has been another round of primaries, and the whole year of musical chairs ends with today's election for that congressional seat.

I'm not going to lie - seeing all the political action around here has made me think that maybe politics is the way to go at some point in my life.

I'm sure there's a lot of unsavory stuff that comes along with political office…but maybe I could someday run for that Fifth Congressional District seat and make a difference that way.

If I don't decide to go that route…well, you'd better believe I'll be voting in the election that decides who does.

New Thing #176: Voting For A Senator In June

It wasn't all that long ago here in Massachusetts we had a special election to fill a Senate seat. When Ted Kennedy died in August of 2009, the election to replace him was held in January of 2010.

This time, it's to fill John Kerry's seat, after he was named Secretary of State.

And today is that election.

I was talking with my wife about how different this election feels.

She thinks it follows the same timeline as the last one.

I suppose she's right, but maybe the big difference is that a January election falls closer to the regularly-scheduled November elections, and here in June we're about as far in the calendar as we can get from the November elections.

Anyway, I'm not here to tell you who to vote for.

I'm just here to tell you that I'll be voting today. And if you're in Massachusetts, I think you should too.

And I offer this political analysis: everyone's predicting an Ed Markey runaway. Which, if I'm Markey, makes me nervous, because voter turnout will be low in late June anyway. And if Markey supporters get complacent and don't go to the polls, while Gomez supporters rally and show up in droves...well, I could see an upset happening.

But I'm not an expert. I'm just a citizen exercising his right to vote.

It'll be interesting to see how many Massachusetts citizens exercise that right on Tuesday.