Hurray for family team voting!!!

I filled out my parents' absentee ballots today, as I read the candidate's paragraphs to them and sought advice. I find the whole process of local elections silly because you have to decide based on teeny paragraphs. Worse still, many candidates don't have paragraphs at all, and so you have to make a decision based arbitrary factors.

A sample:

Me: OK, these three guys are running for Superior Court Judge in the county and they were all lawyers.
Dad: What types of law did they practice?
Me: "Attorney", "lawyer in Santa Clara County", and "attorney at law".
Dad: Um...
Me: Yeah, and none of them are women or minorites, and they list no party affiliations either.
Me: How about we each just vote for one?
Dad: Sounds good!

Sample 2:

Me: Uh oh. What do we do? They are both democrats, both women, and both named the same thing.
Me: Wait, their names are spelled different.
Dad: Spell them.
Me: Deborah and Debra.
Dad: Pick Deborah. Debra sounds lazy.
Me: OK, but let's read their paragraphs first.
Me: Uh-oh. Deborah helped write prop 82 (evil prop that would tax the rich an additional 1.7% annually to send other fairly rich kids to public pre-school with standaradized testing.)
Dad: No way, then. Vote for Debra.

We had to vote for prop 81, the bond measure to raise money for libraries because the con argument said a no vote will force the spend-happy legislators in Sacramento to stop wasting $9 billion on welfare for illegal immigrants if they want to pay for the libraries. Need I say more?

My favorite part though, is that my mom is still a registered Republican because we wanted her to be able to vote for McCain in the primaries back in 2000, so we wouldn't have to pick between Bush and Gore. As a result, in the primaries she always has to vote for the republicans. I discovered it is very hard to pick a favorite republican. It's really more about picking our least favorite Republican. One guy stands out in my mind, because he wanted to help stop illegal immigration because it would save us billions in prison costs for rapists, murderers and sex-offenders. Nice, huh?

This is why I can't go into politics.