“Disenfranchised by the state!”
It’s this kind of incompetence that got Bush elected last year, as the Virginia elections people managed to screw up my absentee ballot stuff, meaning that I was unable to vote this time around. Makes me mad, because for the absentee ballot form, you have to sign a statement under penalty of perjury saying that since you’re doing absentee voting, that you won’t vote in the conventional way. So that kind of stinks, but you learn that the Commonwealth of Virginia is not to be trusted, particularly when said state is under the leadership of Jim Gilmore, Mr. Republican himself. Which is why I’m glad that the fellow pictured at right got elected. This is Mr. Mark Warner. He’s an outsider when it comes to public office, as he came from the business sector, rather than his opponent Mark Earley, who was Virginia’s Attorney General under Jim Gilmore. Mark Warner is also a Democrat, and the first one to be in the Governor’s Mansion since 1994 when Doug Wilder left office due to Virginia’s rather odd one-term limit on their governors. Of course, speaking of the one-term limit in Virginia, it does have its benefits. Besides ensuring a new name and face every four years, it also allows the governor to just be the governor. As you know, those who can be reelected are almost constantly campaigning in some way or another because they want to get reelected. If there is no way that they can be reelected, they can just be the governor, and do what they find to be best.
Date posted: November 6, 2001