The bulk of you are lazy goofs who deserve whatever abuse government gives you during the next four years

I cast my ballot a couple of weeks ago – in the morning hours of Good Friday, to be exact.

I used one of the early voting centers so that I could get it out of the way and have my Tuesday free on the off-chance that I wind up spending the day as a reporter-type person trying to figure out how other people are voting.

YET THE HONEST truth is that the people I will be focusing on are NOT the bulk of our society.

For most of us are going to sit on our duffs and do nothing. If anything, the bulk of us will get irritated at the presence of elections, and act as though they ought not to take place at all.

Now I have made this argument before – and I suspect I will make it repeatedly for as long as I live. Those people who don’t vote are allowing government to run roughshod over them.

A good part of the reason I insist on casting a ballot (even in an election cycle like this one where the posts up for grabs were of no interest to anyone who didn’t live in my immediate community) is that I believe I am ensuring my right to complain for the next four years.

PEOPLE WHO CAN’T be bothered to cast a ballot really have no right to gripe!

So for the at least 80 percent of people who don’t bother to vote on Tuesday (the estimates are that, at best, 20 percent of the electorate will cast ballots), I don’t really want to hear your complaints.

You have your chance on Tuesday to have a say over how those local officials will spend your local tax dollars, and how all those local school districts and park boards and sanitary districts and other entities will operate – and you chose to remain silent!

Now having said that, I do realize that for many people, there isn’t much of a choice come this particular Election Day.

THE REALITY IS that in too many of those suburban communities, there is a local political establishment that tries to operate in as much anonymity as possible – and there isn’t any opposition.

In some cases, no one else could be bothered to challenge the incumbents. Not because of any real satisfaction, but because of apathy.

While in other places, local officials know how to game the electoral process to eliminate anyone who had the “gall” (in the incumbents’ opinion) to challenge them.

Is this what it takes to get people to vote?

And within Chicago proper, this is the election cycle where nothing is at stake – with the exception of those who live in the Far South Side and will be picking a replacement for Jesse Jackson, Jr., to represent them in Congress.

EVEN THERE, THE real election cycle came back in the special primary election held in February. Tuesday is likely the night that one-time state Rep. and Cook County CAO Robin Kelly gets rubber-stamped to go to Washington.

We can speculate all we want about the possibility of a long-shot victory for Republican Paul McKinley or Green Party-type LeAlan Ford – yet the key to a long-shot upset electoral victory is candidate interest.

Yet even so, I still felt compelled to cast my ballot. Like I said, I like to be able to complain about the status quo. Which in this case constitutes a rant about the bulk of people who on Tuesday seemed to only have interest in ignoring the fact that it is Election Day.

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A special election for 8 weeks in office – that’s the legal mess Illinois is in now

The complications being experienced in U.S. District Court these days in trying to figure out how to hold an election to pick a replacement for what is left of the Senate term Barack Obama was elected to in 2004 ought to be evidence of how inane the appeals court ruling was that called for such an election.

It was the federal appeals court in Chicago that earlier this year ruled that federal law requires special elections to be held to pick an interim senator, and has rejected claims by elections officials in Illinois that conducting a special election in this case presents too many logistical problems.

SO NOW, WE have U.S. District Judge John F. Grady hashing through the process with elections officials, trying to figure out just how we Illinois residents will pick a permanent replacement for Obama’s term, on account of the fact that Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., can only be regarded as a temporary replacement.

Never mind the fact that he has been senator for nearly twice as many months as the permanent replacement will serve in weeks in the U.S. Senate.

Some people are just election-happy, regardless of how impractical it was.

Now anyone who has consistently read the commentary here knows that I did not have as much of a problem with the idea of Sen. Burris as some people did. I liked the idea of an older caretaker who would merely finish out the last two years of the Obama term representing Illinois in the Senate, and would not be a serious candidate to win a six-year term in the Nov. 2 elections.

I DIDN’T WANT anyone getting the benefits of incumbency. I wanted the two major party candidates for the Senate seat to have more-or-less equal footing (which is what has happened, we’re in a political fight in Illinois to see whether Alexi Giannoulias or Mark Kirk is the bigger fool).

I also did not want what some incredibly impractical people were calling for – a special election in 2009, followed up by the regular election in 2010.

Having to go through this nonsense of a full-fledged campaign cycle in two consecutive years, right after going through a presidential election in ’08 (and followed up by what many people consider to be the important race – for mayor in ’11) would be electoral overload.

It would break elections officials financially to have to do that, as well as fry us mentally.

BUT WHAT WE’RE going to get is something more ridiculous. Because the people who think they’re pushing for a good-government ideal by wanting yet another election to deal with are going to have to cope with the fact that all they’re doing is putting the major political parties in complete control of the process.

Isn’t that what they want to believe is the root of the actual problem?

Nothing is definite (that’s what elections officials are trying to resolve with Grady), but it seems that the Democratic, Republican and Green parties (they are still legitimate in Illinois) will get to pick the actual candidates to represent them in any special election. The “voters” will get no say. There’s also a good chance that any other parties or political independents will be shut out of this process – even though “Roland, Roland, Roland” Burris says he wants to be a part of any ballot to pick his successor.

How long until one of those independents challenges this whole process? What about Burris himself? I still think it would make the most sense to let him have those final eight weeks in federal office. This may be the one time that those people have a legitimate point.

AS HAS BEEN speculated, when people show up at their polling places on Nov. 2 (or at an early voting center in the weeks leading up to Election Day), they will be asked to vote twice for U.S. Senate – once for a person to serve from Nov. 3 to Jan. 3 at noon, then another to take over at that time and serve the full six-year term.

Common sense says that the political parties will nominate Giannoulias, Kirk and LeAlan M. Jones, which means that most people will vote for the same person for both Senate slots.

Which means that the practical result of this so-called desire for good government in picking our U.S. Senate member is that we will be giving whoever wins the real election an eight-week head start over all of the other new members who get elected to the Senate come Nov. 2.

I’m sure Giannoulias or Kirk (or, if a miracle happens, Jones) would like that. It would give them all that much more seniority among their Senate colleagues – which can mean for slightly more influence. It certainly would eliminate the end result of the 2004 elections when the Senate guidelines for determining seniority ensured that Obama was ranked as the 100th member of the Senate (out of 100).

PERHAPS ILLINOIS IS better off if our new senator ranks in the mid-90s. But it strikes me as a miniscule benefit to receive in exchange for the confusion people here are experiencing now in trying to figure out how we pick an eight-week replacement.

That is an experience that makes me shudder to the point where I just might try casting Burris’ name as a write-in vote for the eight-week term as an act of protest.

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