Recently in Election procedures Category

I always end up doing a double-take at this time of year. OK, in tomorrow's primary, I'm going to vote for ... Wait a second! I'm not voting for anybody. Because I can't.

I'm registered as an independent. That's for professional reasons. When I moved to York, I knew that I'd be covering politics, and I didn't want anybody to be able to accuse me of bias on the basis of my voter registration.

People still accuse me of bias all the time, of course. But since liberals and conservatives tend to level that accusation in more-or-less equal amounts, I figure I'm doing a pretty good job of keeping partisanship out of my writing.

Pennsylvania has a closed primary system, meaning you have to be registered in a certain party to vote in its primary. And even though it would benefit me personally if the state government changed that, I don't think they should.

Since last week's primary, I've written a couple of stories about delegates to the Democratic and Republican parties' national conventions. Keep in mind, these delegates are the people who officially select the candidates running for president of the United States.

Each party has a delegate selection process that ranks about even with some of David Lynch's recent films in terms of comprehensibility. I'll see if I can explain them. If you find your eyes crossing as you're reading, maybe take a break and come back to it.

As the nuns who struggled valiantly to teach me in grade school were inclined to point out, I'm not always the sharpest tool in the shed. So the notoriously arcane nuances of Pennsylvania's election law sometimes get past me.

An alert reader pointed out that I wrote something incorrect about the upcoming primary. I double-checked it with the Pennsylvania Department of State, and dang if he wasn't right.

My family got cable back in the '80s. And I wasted a lot of summer afternoons re-watching cheesy adolescent comedies.

If you did the same, remember this cliche? Some kid that nobody cares about ends up making all the difference. The quiet, nerdy guy who up to then walked through life unnoticed suddenly becomes the hero when he wins the heart of the prom queen with really, really big hair. Or maybe because of him, the summer camp for misfits and lovable slobs (and usually an ethnic stereotype or two) wins the climactic baseball game against the snooty rich kids.

Now that I think about it, maybe the fact that today's kids sit around and play "Grand Theft Auto" for hours isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I digress.

This year, Pennsylvania could be that nondescript kid who makes all the difference. I'm talking about the primaries.