Well, the presidential election was interesting, but for the most part I'm not happy or sad about Bush's re-election. I really couldn't choose between him and Kerry. I was a bit dissappointed that my candidate, Michael Bedarnik, didn't manage to pull down more votes in New Mexico. But personally, I think it might have been a mistake to target swing states. People are more likely to vote third party in states where the vote is pretty much locked up anyway.

Looking at the electoral map, I'm a bit confused. CNN has Kerry locking up Wisconsin even though there is only 11,000 votes difference out of roughly 3 million voters, but it has Iowa as a toss up when there is 13,000 vote difference out of 1.5 million voters, and New Mexico as a toss up with a 12,000 vote difference out of 700,000 voters.

I guess it doesn't matter though, since Kerry conceded. I thought his concession speech was excellent. He is exactly right. We should definitely try to avoid repeating the legal fiasco of 2000 again if at all possible. 500 votes in Florida and a loss in the overall vote points towards a need for close scrutiny, but 125,000 votes in Ohio and a clear win in the popular vote shouldn't. I wouldn't vote for him, but I always respected Kerry, and he went out with class.

It's interesting how the "gay marriage" thing might have won the election for Bush. When Vermont's Supreme Court came down in favor of gay marriage, the politicians there suffered for it too. The bottom line is that gays can make contractual arrangements for most of the benefits marriage provides anyway. And I guess I don't really care that much. Granting special status to a relationship between a man and a woman makes a certain amount of biological sense. Opposite sex pair bonding is genetic and is important for raising children. Having the government recognize and grant special status to that arrangement has a certain logic to it. On the other hand, gay people ought to be left alone to live their lives the way they want to. I suspect the general population is willing to say "ok" to that, but they don't want the government expressly endorsing it in the same way that it does heterosexual pair bonding.

My pick for judge got elected. He won by about 10% of the vote, which is surprisingly slim considering how bad the other candidate was. At least now I can put aside the pretense of being neutral and congratulate the winner. Unfortunately, I have one case that is going to trial for no good reason that is being shuffled over to him. So almost the first thing he will be seeing me in will be a case that will not make me look particularly good. Oh well. It's not like he hasn't seen me before.

My biggest dissappointment was with the State Legislature. Only 3 incumbents lost their positions out of something like 150. They are fucking up big time, but no one seems to be capable of doing anything about it. Things will have to continue to deteriorate for a while, until the need for change can overcome the inertia of incumbency.