Primaries are dumb

An interesting thing happened at the voting place tonight.

I voted. Yay me! Since I'm officially unaffiliated, it means I could vote for anyone I want! (I chose Obama, which probably surprises nobody. I would have chosen Kucinich but he dropped out.)

So that's all well and good and whatnot.

But here's the interesting part. My girlfriend/fiancee is officially registered as a libertarian. Don't worry, she's not a crazy Paultard or anything. In fact, she wanted to vote for Mike Gravel (a Democrat).

But woe is her!

Apparently there are no libertarians running (at least under the title "libertarian"), which means that those who show up to the polling place with a little "L" beside their name don't get to vote for anybody, regardless of party.

That sort of sucks.

The unaffiliated people like me get to vote for anyone we want. The independents get to vote. So do the Greens. Some other little party I forgot about already (I saw the list, but only very briefly) gets to vote. [Update: Mrs. Unicow thinks it was the Rainbow Party.] Dems and Republicans get to vote too. But if you dare to self-identify as a libertarian, you don't get to vote!

Now, I realize the point of primaries is to whittle down the large number of people running under one dominant party so the winner can run against the winner of the other dominant party, but I fail to see how it's good for democracy to deny anyone a vote. Just because you self-identify as a particular political party, why should you have to vote for them?

It's a corrupt system. Another example of how the vote of an individual does not count. What counts are party politics and stupid affiliations more than voting for who you think would be best for the fucking job.

And I'm just ranting. But the Lady Unicow is upset, and that's not the way you should feel after trying to vote.

On the bright side, I did write her name in for a write-in (non-presidential) spot. So maybe she'll get something out of this after all!