As I mentioned yesterday, Anne worked the polls on Tuesday, Election Day.  She was up at four and out the door at a quarter to five.  She worked the polls from five in the morning to seven at night.  She was the Democratic Precinct Captain, so she and her Republican mirror had to escort the ballots back to the collection point.  She didn’t get back home until after 8:30.  After almost seventeen hours of work she ate dinner and then fell asleep.

The results of Tuesday’s election at least on the items on our ballots all went the way we had voted.  A prohibition on smoking in Saint Louis county restaurants and bars passed.  A tenth of a cent sales tax increase to fund communication equipment for police and fire services passed.  A firefighter in Maplewood was murdered by a crazy man.  This was a murder that might have been avoided, if there had been better field communication between the firefighters and the police.  We know the family.

Our precincts (the one we voted in and the one Anne worked) were special this election.  Our Democratic Missouri State Representative that was elected last year was convicted of obstruction of justice and is now in jail.  This precipitated a special election.  Sullivan the Republican candidate that was defeated last year, was more soundly defeated this year.  Frankly, I was surprised.  The ratio of Sullivan to Newman yard signs looked to me to be three-to-one.  So to recap our ballots, we successfully restricted freedoms (cough, cough), we raised taxes and we elected a Democrat.  Does it get any better?  😉

Well yes it does, Dan (counter) protested a hate group that masquerades as Christians.  This would be the Phelps family, of Topeka, Kansas.  This is the same hate group that appears at the funerals of fallen American service personnel.  Personally, I really hate that kind of behavior.  This particular hate group’s hate is gay people.  The site of Monday’s protest and counter protest was not a funeral, but a Saint Louis County high school.  The school had promulgated some sort of can’t we all get along resolution accommodating people of different sexual beliefs.  This resolution precipitated the involvement of the Phelps family.  Dan thinks that locals had invited them in.  Dan and the counter protesters way out numbered the Phelps protesters.  They surrounded the campus.  On campus, the students were all in accord, against the beliefs of the Phelps family.

Nationally the Republicans were making much hay of their successes in the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s races.  Locally, as all politics eventually becomes, the results were all Democrat.  As we move forward let us just try to get along.  There are plenty of people outside of our country that hate us to death.  We don’t need to hate each other.  As that prescient philosopher, Rodney King, once asked, Can’t we all just get along?