I voted today

I left work almost 2 hours early today. That was thanks to having worked almost 2 hours late on Sunday, due to a long tech support ticket I had. I used the extra time to walk to the library to vote. Today is the primary election day in Minnesota. Locals, find your ballot here.

See my evaluation and choices for the 3 offices...

My ballot included only 3 offices for which I needed to choose candidates, so it was very quick to mark.

• U.S. Representative (District 5)
  It was an easy choice. Only 2 political parties were represented. Ilhan Omar is the incumbent who votes the way I want, so it's reasonable to continue voting for her. She's also part of the Progressive caucus, which matches nicely with my interests. Even Biden noted her accomplishments. There is some personal drama that I'm not keen about, and I hope it clears up soon, but the other Democrat choices were worse.
  I voted Omar.
  
  
• U.S. Senator
  Amy Klobuchar is the incumbent. She's certainly not bad, but I'm just sort of "meh" about her. I was never interested in her presidential candidacy. The other Democrat options were so much worse. There was actually a candidate on the Democrat party ticket with this webpage promoting "A NEW TRUMPOCRAT VOICE" (all caps in the original). Ugh!
  I voted Klobuchar.
  
  
• School Board Member At Large (special school district #1)
  There's a candidate named Kim Ellison. I checked, and yes she is related to Keith Ellison (for whom I vote regularly). Her position, though, is irrelevant. As I've said repeatedly over the years, I do not vote for family dynasties in politics. I believe that we're doing democracy wrong if we support dynasties, because the long-term political risk for corruption is too high. So I looked at the other two candidates, Condos and Owodunni. They both seemed high quality contenders. It's nice to have a glut of good candidates. I began to wonder if I would have to flip a coin to decide, because I couldn't think of a good metric to rate one higher than another. Then I discovered one of them had a webpage called The Plant Penthouse. Okay, she's Democrat and not Green party, but I'll always choose Green over similar qualifications.
  I voted Owodunni, but I'll also be happy if Condos wins instead.

On the walk to the Library, I passed a bed of plants along the sidewalk on Lowry Avenue. All of the flower stalks were cut, just below the flower itself, and the flowers were littering the concrete sidewalk. There were maybe 100 of these beautiful flowers just laying there, beside the now-unglamorous green plants. I have no idea why anyone would do that? They certainly look like asters, and I'd guess calendula, maybe? This one is still beautiful, even after getting crushed in my pants pocket while voting and shopping at the small Asian grocery for fresh fruit and another bag of brown jasmine rice.