The Rent is Always Too Damn High

This time I marked a paper ballot for voting. Each election, the method is different. I noticed that the Rent is Too Damn High Party didn't field any candidates in Illinois. Or as it says on the New York ballot, Rent is 2 Damn High. Seems to be only New York. In other parts of the country, the concept could also be repositioned as the Mortgage is Too Damn High.

In fact there weren't too many minor parties or independents represented on my ballot, just a scattering of Libertarians and Greens and a handful of independents. Not a single neo-Whig that I noticed, and the Natural Law Party seems to be just another organization in the dustbin of third-party history. I vaguely recall that in the late 1990s, Natural Law was able to field a few candidates and even buy a little radio air time.

Once again, the polling officials at my suburban polling place were paragons of rectitude. I wasn't even offered a doughnut for my vote, which goes against the spirit of elections in Cook County. Mostly they were sitting around talking with each other, since not that many people were there at 11 am to vote. They judiciously avoided talking about politics in favor of talking about old times, and their old times went back a little further than mine. I imagine community rooms at independent-living senior housing properties see a lot of socializing like this.