Absentee Ballot

My absentee ballot has arrived in the mail. Now comes the most painful part of the process- deciding who actually deserves my vote.

Looking at the ballot now, I see that most of my choices will be fairly easy. The Republican slate of candidates for state and county offices is a solid one. Can there really be any doubt about voting for Ray Burton? Of course not.

But then I look at the top two offices contested this year: Governor and U.S. Representative, District One. In the Governor's race, we have a weak-kneed Democratic incumbent, John Lynch, who retains a mysterious popularity among the people. His opponent, first-term state Representative Jim Coburn, has no chance of winning and is clearly second-tier.

In this race, my displeasure is evenly split between Lynch - for being a political coward - and the Republican Party for not putting forward a credible candidate. They were deterred by Lynch's popularity (thin as it is!), and left the field to less-than-credible Coburn. The issue here, then, isn't whether I will cast a vote for Lynch over Coburn. I will not! The issue is whether I will cast a vote for Coburn or a write-in candidacy.

Congress presents a tougher challenge. I campaigned for the Republican incumbent, Jeb Bradley, in the 2002 primary season. He's personally likeable, free of corruption (so far as I know), and not a fire-breather. But at the same time, a vote for Bradley is a vote for continued Republican control of Congress, a prospect which I find disturbing. But on the other hand, there are the Democrats.

The Democratic Party nominated Carol Shea-Porter, in what many saw as an unexpected "protest" against the war. I beg to differ. Shea-Porter fits the expected mold of a New Hampshire Democrat quite nicely: liberal, fifty-something and female. In 2000 and 2002, the Democrats contested the district with a liberal, fifty-something woman (as a matter of fact, in 2002 the Democrats fielded three liberal, fifty-something women: one for Senate, two for the two Congressional Districts). As I am not liberal, not fifty-something, and not a woman, I remain non-plussed by the combination of those three traits.

I suspect this is the dilemma facing many of my fellow New Hampshire "small-c" conservatives. Do we vote for someone whose views we favor in general, knowing that it would empower the corruption of the Congressional Republicans? Or do we vote for someone with whose views we disagree, knowing it could bring to power people who would take the country in an equally wrong direction, but hoping it would stop the corruption?

UPDATE: I've voted. I voted the ticket, with the exception of the Congressional seat. There I voted for the person I think most qualified to hold the seat.