This what democracy (really) looks like: Voting in a one-party town.

 Ann Arbor is solidly in thrall to the Democrat Party and so voting, except in the primary election, is nearly always an anti-climax to put it mildly. The intern over at the Ann Arbor Chronicle picked through the write-in ballots from 2011's First Ward Democratic Party primary election. Pathetic doesn't come close describing the feeling you get looking at these ballots. People show up to vote and find there is only one name on the ballot. So they vent their feelings with write-in votes. Some write in their wife, or themselves, H.P. Lovecraft characters, or scrawl fragments of political graffiti like "no fuller road" a reference to the proposed train station-parking structure boondoggle currently under discussion. One man, one vote, and one frickin' candidate. This is what democracy looks like in a one party town. Embrace the suck.

The people have spoken, the bastards.

All your politics are belonging to us!

Primary election results in Ann Arbor are in. All incumbent Democratic council members were renominated and the rest ran unopposed and won by default. And that's it. There was your election folks. About 1200 or so people in a city of 114,000 decided it all for Ann Arbor. And now we, like the good sheep we are, can all go back to grazing until it's time for us to be sheared again. Bahhhh.

Annals of democracy

Two blogging heads tell us why the think that the ballot initiative in California to legalize marijuana lost in last week's election.