Don't mock

A few days ago the Man was claiming in this blog that there's not much sign of election fever round here - but that's not true. It's just about the only topic of conversation, and especially today. Most of our friends are Democrats. They are still reeling from the fact that Bush managed to get re-elected last time and are desperate to get their own candidate in this time round. The problem is, which candidate? It's still too close to call between Clinton and Obama, and probably still will be even once today's Super Tuesday primary votes are all counted.

Speaking of 'primary votes', the school held a mock election today, and even the Kindergartners had the chance to cast their ballot. Both our kids have proudly announced that they voted for Clinton, though not so much because of her policy pledges. The Girl chose her because 'Hillary's a girl and she looks nice' and the Boy because 'in Linton my friends' mum is called Hilary'.

Ballot sheets were sent home so that parents could vote too, which was very gratifying for the Man and me because we really feel we're missing out not having a real vote. Unfortunately we couldn't find the darn bits of paper until after the children were on the bus this morning, so I ended up driving to school to hand them in. Which was mad and environmentally irresponsible, but I seriously value the concept of democracy. Though our mock votes today may have been meaningless in any wider sense, they still meant something to me.