Well, the exit polls tell me that I just wasted my time walking close to two miles to and from my polling place. Then again, I did get some exercise.
The polling place wasn't crowded, and everyone was joking about chads on the punchcard ballots. One elderly woman was asking for assistance, not because she didn't know how to use the voting machine but because she said, "I want to be sure I vote how I want to vote." You wonder how difficult it would be in this computer age for someone to design a voting machine that gives you a little paper printout of your vote to check and take home with you. With so much suspicion about the accuracy of these devices, it might help keep the system honest.
I can't help but feel that no matter how the vote comes out, everyone loses a little. None of them — Davis, Arnold, Cruz or McClintock — strikes me as someone who will ultimately please voters. I voted as I did (against the recall) because I believe it's a very bad system, and if a recall is mounted against Governor Schwarzenegger, we'll hear all the people who now defend it do a fast backflip and decide that. It might make sense if it had been used to remove a bad executive and insert a good one, but it looks like it's going to install a man of no experience. You wouldn't let an inexperienced doctor operate on you, you wouldn't let an inexperienced lawyer defend you in court…but somehow, some people have decided that the state is in deep, deep trouble and what it needs is a guy who has never spent one day in a real government position. I don't understand how casually people can brush that aside or even see it as a positive. I could have voted for Dick Riordan, or even for Peter Ueberroth, who has at least done this kind of work. But I couldn't get behind Arnold for the same reason I could never cast a presidential vote for Jesse Jackson, Pat Buchanan, Ralph Nader, Al Sharpton, Ross Perot or anyone else trying to make an important job into an entry-level position. Experience isn't everything but it also isn't nothing.