Thanks to advance voting, I fulfilled my citizenship duty yesterday. It took no more than ten minutes. Why didn’t I know this before? Why doesn’t everyone do this so they can have more time to get sopping drunk on Election Night? (As I plan on doing, so that I’m prepared for the result, whether good or bad.)

The race is getting really, really close now - Rasmussen, a pollster website that generally leans conservative, but seems pretty fair in polling analysis, shows Bush at 47.9% and Kerry at 47.1%. The gap was like 2 or 3 percentage points two days ago. I am getting even more paranoid and jumpy these days. After I voted, I checked my ballot at least three times, just to make sure that I didn’t accidentally mark the “Bush/Cheney” circle by mistake. Despite the fact that there’s no danger of ‘hanging chads’ with a paper ballot!

There’s some talk about the possibility of Kerry winning the electoral vote but not the popular vote. Although it’d be preferable that he wins both, it might actually turn out to be a positive thing. Republicans are not going to want to reform the outdated electoral system if it works in their favor (*cough* Bush 2000 *cough*), but if it works against them this time, there might be more support on both sides to get rid of the electoral college altogether. Now hopefully Kerry, if this happened, wouldn’t get ousted from office in the process!

I’m glad I took the time to research the local elections here, though, because voting on party lines would definitely be a mistake! I wonder if, because Lawrence is so liberal, conservatives don’t just join the Democratic party and run with the label, even though their platforms are pretty sketchy - for instance, Tom Holland, who’s running for the State House, 10th District, supports amending the constitution to ban gay marriage. ! Also, I ended up voting for the Republican incumbent in the District Attorney race, largely because of the whole stink about one of the local judges.

In Lawrence, there’s been a huge campaign to remove Judge Paula Martin from the bench. I even got a memo about it at work. I think I had vaguely remembered hearing about Judge Martin before, so I scanned the memo instead of throwing it away. Basically it read something like this:

“Judge Martin supports RAPE, she has intervened to reduce sentences for convicted RAPISTS, is this the kind of person you want in charge of YOUR CHILDREN’S SAFETY? Paid for and supported with YOUR TAXES? When you vote on November 2, remember to vote NO for Judge MARTIN!”

Now I thought this sounded a smidge ridiculous, so I researched it a little bit more on the LJ world. It looks like the case in question was an issue of statutory rape, which is consentual sex between an adult and a person under 14 years old. I guess under KS law, statutory rape is treated the same as forced rape. Judge Martin felt that there should be a distinction between statutory rape and forced rape, and rightly so.

Here’s my take on the whole thing. While it’s not right for adults to have sex with minors, it’s definitely not the same thing as being attacked and physically violated; anyone who has been through that experience would testify to that! Especially since it was -consentual-, and the girl was -thirteen-, not like seven or eight or something. The girl even went to get condoms from the health department - hey, she’s mature enough to practice safe sex! That’s great; she ought to be rewarded for her awareness in a state that’s pushing more ‘abstinence-only’ “education” to replace comprehensive sex ed. Anyways, most thirteen year olds I’ve met nowadays seem more sexually developed and mature than when I was thirteen. I don’t know if I like this trend, since it doesn’t seem like intellectual development hasn’t really kept up with this biological maturity (judging from those same thirteen year olds I have met). Yet regardless, does the guy need to be thrown in jail for thirteen years?

Back to the District Attorney race - it looks like the incumbent, Christine McKenney, has done a pretty good job handling the situation and supporting Judge Martin, potentially compromising her own position. Her opponent, the Democrat, has aligned himself with the anti-Martin group. Maybe I just haven’t gotten enough information from the anti-Martin side, but it seems like the campaign to remove her from the bench is motivated by hysteria and emotion-manipulating, instead of, say, reason? I’ve not read or heard of any of the anti-Martin people addressing the issue of statutory vs. forced rape; instead, it’s “Martin supports rape! Off with her head!” It’s a little scary, the more I read about it. Sadly, the local campaigns tend to be no better or more civil than the national ones. Ugh. The more I get into politics, the more I’m absolutely disgusted by it.