Honestly, I have no idea. California had an(other) primary election today. I decided to be a good citizen and study up on the candidates & propositions before going in, instead of just voting for the Democrat with the coolest name like I usually do. California is kind enough to send out sample ballots ahead of time … which, of course, I had “misplaced.” So first, I had to figure out which district I belong to. I went to the LA Times website, where they have a handy link that asks for your address and tells you where you are in the grand scheme of things. The link returned 14 different designations, including “33rd US Congressional District” and “26th State Senate”. Cool. Next, I had to figure out who was running in all these elections. I went to the best website for liberal voting info — The League of Young Voters (formerly the League of Pissed Off Voters … I wonder why they wouldn’t want to keep that name?). This led me to another site that contained voter guides for a number of places around the country: theballot.org. So far, so good. I found the ballot for LA County and went to work, writing up handy voting guides for Sarah and myself.

We got in the car and headed toward our local polling place. First problem: I thought it was at the church around the corner, Sarah thought it was somewhere else entirely. The first two times we voted, it was at the church around the corner. Apparently, the last time it was at a school farther away. I insisted it was the church, so Sarah reluctantly followed my lead. It wasn’t at the church. After a brief fight about how I always insist my opinions are correct (hey, c’mon guys, you know what I’m talking about!) we went to the school. It wasn’t there, either. We got on our phones and discovered that the polling place had changed to an entirely new location, several blocks away from our apartment.

Finally at our real polling location, we got our punch cards and went into our separate booths. Lo and behold, I had the wrong information, so for the first three pages, I ended up voting for the Democrat with the coolest name. When I got into my office, I went online to figure out where I made my mistake. It turns out a the major race in my district — the race for US Representative — wasn’t even listed in the handy voting guide I’d spent so much time poring over. In addition, we apparently belong to one district for the State Assembly and an entirely different district for the State Senate. There was also this long list of candidates for Party Central Committee, of which we were allowed to vote for 7 members, who, as far as I can tell, have never been investigated by anyone ever.

So my analysis is that it’s thoroughly impossible to be an informed voter. Researching an election involves coordinating disparate threads of information from a vast array of sources that are only aligned in their mission of being as inscrutable and misleading as they can possibly be. The most infuriating races are always the judges … this is the shadowy network of elected officials who are responsible for creating legal precedent, and they are almost always a complete stab in the dark. My homework helped me slightly in this respect, but I was still voting on a 2 sentence summary of someone’s entire career.

On the bright side, I am proud to say that I got to cast a vote today for a candidate named Rocky Crabb.