What are you doing Election Eve?

Since I live in a flakey West Coast State, I just completed my absentee ballot for tomorrow's election. I've filled in many an absentee ballot before becoming a Washington State resident, mind you, but that was always because I lived out of state and/or was out at sea. I'm going to be in Seattle tomorrow, driving through my district, and posting my ballot in the mail. Crazy.

Anyway, I was filling out my ballot in front of Monday night football (requisite football-watching-beer in hand) this evening in time for tomorrow's election. Not being too up on the local voting issues and candidates, I made my decisions partly on the newspapers endorsements, and partly on Tricia's Rules of Voting. I didn't really realize that I had these rules until I was walking Jeff through my decision process. Here they are:

Rule # 1: Vote for the person most qualified for the job whom you think will do the best job.
Rule # 2: If you know nothing about the candidates' qualifications, vote along party lines. You can't go too wrong this way.
Rule # 3: If you know nothing about the candidates, their parties, and don't really know the issues, vote for the woman.
Rule # 4: If both know nothing about the candidates, their parties, or the issues, and the candidates are the same gender, vote for the person of color. They've probably been marginalized at some point in their life, and will be more sympathic to others on the margins.
Rule # 5: If there is only one person running, vote for that person. You don't want a joke write-in candidate actually taking office.
Rule # 6: If you get to rule # 6, then you just shouldn't vote on this topic. Or write-in someone you know who you'd like to see have the office.

I left several sections blank. I'm just lucky there were no punch cards.

Democracy in action; I'm proud to be an American!