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I was on the ballot!
Feb. 5th, 2008 11:34 pmWhen I went in to vote today, I got a Democratic primary ballot and checked off Barack Obama for my presidential choice. Then I moved to the Democratic State committee choices and voted for a guy who I've maybe met twice and my friend Dorothea Jones. And then I moved down to the Ward Democratic committee. At this point, I was thinking "these ballot choices are so obscure. Who ever votes on these, anyways?"
So, I started looking down the list of names. I recognized a few of the names as people that I've run into over my past couple of years in the political realm. And then I ran into "Hyoun Park." Being the idiot that I am, my first response was "There are two Hyoun Parks in Roxbury?"
The answer is "No, dumbass. That's YOUR name on the ballot."
And then I remembered conversation that I had with the ward Democratic committee chair, Victoria Williams, a couple of months ago. She asked if I was interested in being on the Ward committee and I figured that would be fine. At the ward level, the politics is mostly confined to getting out the vote and scheduling debates, which I'm actually a big fan of. (And there's some petty intra-city squabbling, which I ignore so completely that I couldn't tell you who's ticked off at who.) I'm all about bringing political candidates into Roxbury to talk about the issues of our community, so I said that I was interested. Victoria mentioned something at the time about running for the committee, but I didn't even think about it at the time.
It was only when I saw my name on the ballot that I realized that she had meant that I was actually running for this position on a ballot. The actual vote was just a formality, since there were only 12 names listed and the top 21 vote-getters are in the committee. So, in the end, it really wasn't anything more than signing up for a committee with the side effect that every voter in my neighborhood now has seen my name.
But for this primary, I can claim to have been on the same ballot as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and John Edwards, albeit for a different office and only in my section of Boston. When Lynne first heard about this, her first reaction was, "YOU ARE NOT HAVING A POLITICAL CAREER. I AM NOT GOING TO BE A POLITICAL SPOUSE." And I totally agree. As an atheist who isn't all that loquacious and loathes the idea of campaigning or fundraising, I would be an awful politician. Which is great! But I got the best of both worlds: I didn't have to campaign or put in any effort, but still had my name on a ballot with this year's presidential candidates, which is kinda cool, no?
So, I started looking down the list of names. I recognized a few of the names as people that I've run into over my past couple of years in the political realm. And then I ran into "Hyoun Park." Being the idiot that I am, my first response was "There are two Hyoun Parks in Roxbury?"
The answer is "No, dumbass. That's YOUR name on the ballot."
And then I remembered conversation that I had with the ward Democratic committee chair, Victoria Williams, a couple of months ago. She asked if I was interested in being on the Ward committee and I figured that would be fine. At the ward level, the politics is mostly confined to getting out the vote and scheduling debates, which I'm actually a big fan of. (And there's some petty intra-city squabbling, which I ignore so completely that I couldn't tell you who's ticked off at who.) I'm all about bringing political candidates into Roxbury to talk about the issues of our community, so I said that I was interested. Victoria mentioned something at the time about running for the committee, but I didn't even think about it at the time.
It was only when I saw my name on the ballot that I realized that she had meant that I was actually running for this position on a ballot. The actual vote was just a formality, since there were only 12 names listed and the top 21 vote-getters are in the committee. So, in the end, it really wasn't anything more than signing up for a committee with the side effect that every voter in my neighborhood now has seen my name.
But for this primary, I can claim to have been on the same ballot as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and John Edwards, albeit for a different office and only in my section of Boston. When Lynne first heard about this, her first reaction was, "YOU ARE NOT HAVING A POLITICAL CAREER. I AM NOT GOING TO BE A POLITICAL SPOUSE." And I totally agree. As an atheist who isn't all that loquacious and loathes the idea of campaigning or fundraising, I would be an awful politician. Which is great! But I got the best of both worlds: I didn't have to campaign or put in any effort, but still had my name on a ballot with this year's presidential candidates, which is kinda cool, no?
