Vote!

I just filled out my absentee ballot, put in the inner envelope, sealed, signed, and dated it, and properly put it in the out envelope with the bar code showing in the window. I still have to stamp and mail it. I’m crossing on the t’s and dotting all the i’s. I’ll mail it today or tomorrow and get it in plenty early. New York doesn’t have drop boxes and I’d have to wait for early voting to begin and drop it at an early voting site if I didn’t want to mail it. If I were to do that I might as well just vote. I miss putting the ballot in the machine myself but this way it’s one less COVID-19 risk to take. Yes, it’s a tiny risk, but the trick is to minimalize even the tiny risks. I’m not afraid to go inside, I go shopping, and have even taken mass transit, but none of these are easily avoidable. I have a clear alternative to voting in person. Perhaps if I lived in a swing state I’d feel differently, but Trump is going to lose New York by a country mile. Even on the early returns he’ll be far behind. That’s the only thing I’d be worried about; not that my vote wouldn’t be counted but that Trump will pounce on any state that he’s ahead of in the in person voting then falls behind when the absentee ballots are counted. The absentee ballots should be counted as soon as early voting begins. Last I heard in New York they don’t begin the count until a week after election day. Maybe they have changed that since the primary. One big advantage of voting by mail now is that if I die before election day my vote still counts. Have you thought about that? I told my roommate that if I die before I mail it she should mail it for me. She said she would but that she preferred I didn’t die. I feel the same way.

I always have fun with the write-ins. When there’s a candidate that runs unopposed I write in a name to protest the lack of choice, it’s undemocratic. This time on the race for Civil Court Judge I voted for Jacob DeGrom. I want a judge with a wicked fastball. In the past I’ve voted for Hobbits, characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Pete & Maura Kennedy, and my family. Now I’m having second thoughts, perhaps I should have voted for Tony Stark; he lives in New York and is a genius. Maybe next time. I once told a friend about my write-ins and he did the same. Then he horrified me by writing in fictional characters in contested important elections, including congress. Don’t do that but please use write-ins to protest uncontested elections. Another thing I do is vote for on the Working Family Party’s line when it’s the same candidate as the Democrats. New York allows candidates to run on multiple lines. For years there were two sizable minor parties, the Liberal and the Conservative. They served a useful purpose; the Liberals kept the Democrats left and the Conservatives kept the GOP right. John Lindsay won his second term as mayor of New York running as a Liberal. His first term was as a Republican, there were leftist Republicans in those days. He lost the Republican nomination to John Marchi in 1969 and the Dems nominated relatively conservative Mario Procaccino. The next year Conservative Party candidate James Buckley was elected to the Senate. That election still hurts. Eventually the Liberals became nothing but a patronage machine and withered. The Working Families Party serves the same purpose now.

I made something new for dinner, pork loin with Montreal dry rub. It was on sale. I have wanted to try it for a while. The problem is that they are too large for one person. This was a smaller one. I wasn’t sure how it would come out if I cut it before cooking so I cooked the whole thing and will eat the rest as leftovers. I’ll hope that doesn’t dry them out. It was so good. I love a tender pork loin. I made it in the air fryer of course. I always get excited when I make something new.

I’ll keep it short today and make breakfast. Sausageeggandcheese is on the menu.