I can vote here now... hooray?

I got another sign that I'm officially becoming a part of the city... I got word in the mail today that the New York City Board of Elections has processed my voter registration.

It tells me the districts I'm in for different elections, city council, state assembly , etc... all that fun stuff, but it doesn't tell me any candidates or anything.

I guess I'm not too surprised that they didn't send like a sample ballot, but it sure would have been nice. They don't even really have anything online telling me who is running for any positions I'll be voting on.

I've been looking around, and I've barely been able to find out even who is filling the positions right now... craziness. From what I can tell, it looks like most of my reps have been parked in there seats for a pretty long time and/or show no signs of going anywhere...

Here's a quick look at the motley crew that allegedly represents me and my interests, or something like that...

My Congressman - Charlie Rangel - A lot of you may have actually heard of and/or recognize Rangel. He was first elected to "represent" Harlem and my nearby neighborhood in 1970 and is a pretty, shall we say, outgoing politician and his name gets out a lot. Also, he finds himself pretty regularly caught up in scandal after scandal...

My State Assemblyman - Herman D. Farrell, Jr. - Like with Rangel, it always provides a special comfort knowing that someone has been parked in the same political positions since long before I was born. I'm not a big proponent of term limits, but wow, 34 years in Albany? That's probably long enough to spoil someone who even started with the best of intentions. It probably doesn't matter since it's not too likely anyone else is running for the seat anyway...

My City Councilman - Robert Jackson - Seems normal enough I guess. I'll have to see who, if anyone else, is in this race.

My State Senator - Eric T. Schneiderman - I like how if you go to the bottom of the biography you can see how he just barely kept his seat in the 2006 election by beating the Republican challenger 51,202 votes to 4,270. Talk about a nailbiter.

Neither of my U.S. Senate seats are up for election this time around... though as I understand it neither Chuck Schumer nor queen carpetbagger Hillary Clinton are in too much danger of losing their seats anytime soon.

I'm already pretty jaded on politics in general, since it really tends to be about the slimiest thing there is, but realizing that my votes are likely pointless even in the more local races is just icing on the cake. Thinking about the overall sliminess reminds me of one of my favorite Reagan quotes:

"It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first."

Don't worry, I'll of course still end up voting anyway though...

Heck there are still other citywide races that I understand are pretty heated that I need to look into. They may actually prove interesting to research, things like comptroller and such.

Hopefully as I look more into the local races I'll find some of the more obscure races to look into. Like when I was in Kentucky I got to vote on the county coroner (and even covered the public debate between the two coroner candidates, which was definitely interesting to say the least... the newcomer accused the longtime coroner of directing more than a fair share of the indigent bodies to the funeral home he owned... weird, scandalous stuff)

Unfortunately though it's getting late, so that kind of in-depth research will have to come some other time...