This morning, I voted. Are you proud of me? Would you like to give me a sticker, kiss me, buy me a beer, buy my book?
Before you get too excited, let me tell you why I voted. I voted because, when I showed up at the polling place, it wasn’t wholesale chaos. I voted because there wasn’t a line. I voted because this year, at this particular time, at this particular polling place, the poll workers weren’t being the incompetent, disenfranchising, Democratic party hacks I’ve come to expect from certain districts in Brooklyn.
Stop right there. Don’t lecture me about these patriotic volunteers doing their civic duty. In New York, they’re paid to be there. In fact, they’re paid even more if they bother to get trained. (Yeah, training, last I checked, was optional.)
Obviously, I’m a horrible citizen because I even considered not voting. Then again, I live in one of those districts in New York that go Democrat, oh, 110% of the time. Indeed, I’d bet if NO ONE showed up at the polls, the Democrats would still do pretty good. Yes, I know there are precincts in other states that are just as reliably Republican. I’m sure there are districts in, say, Texas where a vote for a Democrat is akin to french-kissing Satan. This is the state of our nation.
So why do I vote? I guess mostly so that I retain the right to bitch about the outcomes for the next two to four years. If you don’t vote, you resign that right. How did I vote? It doesn’t matter. Andrew Cuomo sounds like Al Pacino and Carl Paladino is running because he’s sad about his dead son. Cuomo is the sort of political hack who thinks he is owed elective office and Paladino is batshit insane. Oh, and Cuomo was going to win big anyway. As far as the issue of term limits? Why does it matter what we vote on that when King Mike and his minions can simply overturn the will of the people when it suits them?
If I’d had my wits about me, I would have written in candidates for every office, but I was drawing blanks.
But yeah, I voted. Perhaps you should vote, too. Perhaps you shouldn’t. If you don’t know who the candidates are, if you don’t know what the issues are, if you have to ask someone else how to vote? Stay home. I don’t know where we got this idea that everyone needs to vote — even people who haven’t been paying attention or know the first thing about government. That’s not to say you can’t figure out the basics in the next few hours and then get to the polling place. But if you don’t know, don’t go.
You don’t need an “I Voted” sticker that bad and you can just lie to Facebook if you want a virtual button.
KEN WHEATON 
I have never gotten an I Voted sticker in NY. And, fwiw, my mom is a poll worker (the good kind, a Republican one) in Brooklyn and they had to stay until midnight yesterday because of the new idiotic system. And no, they don’t pay them for 3 extra hours.
Can we dispense with this idea that if you don’t vote you resign the right to complain about the outcome? It’s just some shit that people spew out to a) get you to vote, and b) get you to shut up. The idea that you didn’t choose between two egotistical assholes and so therefore when one of them fucks things up (as you probably suspected he/she would) you can’t complain about it because you didn’t pick the other asshole is ridiculous and illogical. Maybe they ought to have a line on the ballot that reads “none of the above.” The only people who REALLY have no right to complain about the outcome are the ones who DID go out to vote and voted the idiot into office. Yeah, you know who you are. I’m lookin’ at YOU.