New Zealand elections are today and I voted a bit earlier. Due to one of those sensible but weird quicks of NZ law, I can't legally publish anything that might (a) influence other people's vote or (b) speculate on the outcome, so I won't.
I'm often - or even usually - quite unhappy with the result of elections, but I always enjoy voting. Hannah Arendt once observed that in a representative democracy, the people get to vote one day every two (or three, etc) years, before handing over democracy to their elected representatives. That is a bit of an oversimplification: democracy doesn't begin or end at the ballot box, and citizens' influence over their government can be exercised continually and in multitudinous fashions. Nevertheless, a vote, and a day to vote in, is not something to be taken lightly.
"I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet."
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