Back from voting

Favorite local candidate name: Judge Proud was up for re-election. Voted against him — not because he sounds like a character from John Bunyan, but because I don’t support judges from the Waterboarding Party.

Today was also my first opportunity to vote to remove the Delaware County judge who last summer, in Sea Isle, N.J., I overheard ranting about how Upper Darby was “turning into Nairobi” and “going to Hell.” Voting against racist judges is a Good Thing.

Local elections like this make it difficult to cast an informed vote. I pulled the Big Lever today because the Delco Republican Machine is so entrenched, corrupt and moribund that a vote for Anyone Else is the obvious choice. But party identity isn’t always easy to gauge down at the very local end of the ballot.

The first election I ever voted in seemed at the time like the sort of Your Vote Matters civics lesson everyone’s first experience ought to be. My hometown had been ruled, for decades, by a mayor known locally as “King Larry.” The king was, nominally, a Republican, but he really represented a party of one. He wasn’t aligned with the larger statewide GOP, and opposition to him had led to many local Republicans registering as Democrats, so at the municipal level, party identity simply became a way of registering one’s support for or opposition to The Mayor.

In my very first election, King Larry was opposed by a bright-eyed and handsome New Man in Town. Like most people, I didn’t know much about him, except that he was charismatic enough that he seemed like he might actually do the impossible and defeat our mayor-for-life.

And he did. By 11 votes. And mine was one of them. Hip-hip-hooray!

The new mayor’s affair with the town secretary, who was also married, began shortly after his swearing in. A few months later they were cited for public lewdness in the parking lot of a bar in the next town over. King Larry was reinstated after the following election.

But still, you know, Your Vote Matters. Really.