Wesley: That's beside the point.

Hillary won! Hillary won! Whoo-HOO!

...well, based on the exit polls, anyway. The local stations proclaimed her the winner mere moments after the official polls closed, long before any official results came in. As I type this, an hour after the 9:00 end of the election, only half the precincts in the state have reported in, and they're currently tied.

But the media have spoken. Apparently, she's won. And I'm so glad.

(Not that I don't still wish the Democrats had put somebody else up for the Senate seat, but you take what you can get.)

Not that it matters as much. I do think Gore is by far the lesser of the two evils, but I also think a presidential loss may be the slap in the face the Democratic Party needs to return to its senses. I sorta figure there's no good scenario here, no matter who wins.

Me, I put in a write-in vote for the Socialist candidate, David McReynolds. Not that I agree with his entire platform, but the idea is to remind the Democrats to stop taking us liberals for granted.

As it happens, I unexpectedly spent some time last night making a bunch of calls last night to remind people to vote. Long story. I ran into an old friend on campus, followed him to his office at the student government, upon which the two of us got roped into joining the phone bank for awhile.

(Do I really think get-out-the-vote phone banks not focused on a particular candidate work? Nah, probably not. But you never know... and, again, I just sort of fell into this one. Besides, they had free kosher pizza on hand. I'd do a lot worse for free kosher pizza.)

The high point would probably be the guy I called who turned out to be at work at a phone bank for the Gore campaign. Cute.

The low point would definitely be this 23-year-old I called, or at least tried to call. Not only did I mangle his name, but it turned out that he had died the day before. The people on the other end understandably seemed pretty torn up. Meep.

It held up a hand.

"I come in peace," it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, "take me to your Lizard."

Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop frenetic news reports on television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.

"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see...."

"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"

"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The lizards are lizards. The people hate the lizards, and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said this was a democracy."

"I did," said Ford. "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"

Anyway. For the more minor elections (judges and such), I pretty much voted the straight Liberal ticket. For the one question on the ballot, about authorizing bonds to pay for transportation-related expenses, I flipped a coin. It came up "heads," so I voted "yes."

My philosophy is that even making a bad decision is better than not voting at all, you see. If nothing else, it makes the politicians think people in your district are paying attention.

Which is not to say that Douglas Adams doesn't have a point.

Y'know, they really oughta do something about having the polls end at the same time throughout the country. I can't quite see why it's not feasible.

Umm, sorry. Cats flashback.

Anyway, still no decision on the presidential race, although the commentators seem to be leaning a bit towards a win by Dubya.

The big question, apparently, is Florida. Gore had been the projected winner at one point, but it's been back to being too close to call for the past few hours.

One thing you can say for the electoral system: it makes for pretty and informative map displays on Election Night.

I think I may try to manage that now, actually. I can find out who won in the morning.

(I'm probably kidding myself, of course. But at least I'll get this entry up already.)