We had a municipal election here in Vancouver on October 20. Katr and I are very diligent voters to begin with but a good friend of ours was running for city council, so we made sure to vote early and often. Hahaha just kidding, we just voted early, but we congratulated ourselves often (this is Katr's I Voted! sticker on the right - I put mine in my pocket and then found it after the election and it felt like it was too late to wear it on Oct 30).
The ballot for this year's election was very long. For example, there were 71 people running for city council and their names were not in alphabetical order on the ballot - the names on the ballot were in random order, so that Brinder Bains didn't have an advantage over Wei Qiao Zhang. But this made it tricky when you DID know who you wanted to vote for, because it was really fuckin' hard to find them.
Thanks to Plan Your Vote, and Katr, who actually did all the research and put the list together for me and sent it to my phone, I had my list of chosen candidates the mayoral, city council and school board races all ready to go when we got to the polls. I got my five foot long ballot from the volunteer and dragged it over to the "privacy booth" to begin the process. I filled in my choices for the mayoral, city council and park board candidates before getting to the school board candidates.
And that's when I saw it.
Mrs. Doubtfire was running for school board.
I had seen chalk graffiti on my morning walks saying "Mrs. Doubtfire scool board" and assumed it was just a joke. But apparently, it was NOT a joke. There was her name, right on the ballot.
And I REALLY REALLY wanted to vote for Mrs. Doubtfire.
A battle for my soul began in the voting booth.
Devil: YOU HAVE TO. It's HILARIOUS.
Angel: Don't throw away your vote on a joke.
Devil: But come ONNNNN. It's for school boaaaaaard!! Who gives a shit about school board??? YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE KIDS.
Angel: I know people who have kids!
Devil: But it could be so crazy! Mrs. Doubtfire could really shake things up at the ol' VSB. It would be a non-stop thrill-ride of assaholic-ness! It would be like when Trump got el--- oh, wait, shit.
Angel: There it is.
Devil: Shut up.
It still took an Herculean effort to stick to my original list. But in the end, I cast my vote for an actual candidate with actual ideas about making the school board better blah blah blah BO-RING.
According to these election results, 5912 of my fellow Vancouverites couldn't resist voting for Mrs. Doubtfire - although she still finished last, unlike Rollergirl for mayor and Spike for city council, who both did pretty well.
After the election, I had a pang of regret - what if Mrs. Doubtfire wasn't a total joke? What if the candidate who ran as Mrs. Doubtfire actually had some great ideas but no money or name recognition and felt like running as Mrs. Doubtfire was their only way to stand out?
I did a little research and found a Q&A that the Georgia Straight did with all of the school board candidates. Here's a snippet:
Question 4: What’s your position on school closures?
MrsD: I have not ruled out shutting down schools. If we shut down some schools those buildings could be used for housing as incentives to attract and recruit human resources and otherwise combat the unaffordability underlying so many of the board's problems. It may not be the most popular answer to this question, but in the end which is more traumatic to students, teachers, and their families? In the last legal election, I was the only candidate to not promise not to shut down schools. Several of those candidates have now openly admitted that they were incompetent.
So no, I'm okay with my choice. Although I AM a little disappointed that I didn't vote for Sophia Cherryse Kaur Kaiser for mayor:
"I live in the utter udder bliss of my Milky Way Universal breast vortex. Pure bliss in the 13th vibration vibrating my quantum signature oom (11v) my genetics DNA Logos Word (10v) which becomes my consciousness (9v) of every breath I've ever breathed."
TOTES, amirite?
Anyway, the last time there was a big election in the U.S., me, Katr and Drtr ate a lot of chocolate and drank a lot of booze as we watched shit get waaaaay too real. In the interim, we discovered pot brownies, so that happened first thing this morning, because we couldn't face a whole day of exit polls, voter suppression and stomach-churning anxiety unmedicated.
America - we are thinking of you!! You can do this!
