Meh.

No, seriously. It wasn’t an especially interesting election, with some minor exceptions, and almost all of those are ballot initiatives. Midterm candidate races are some of the most consistently snooze-worthy elections out there, no matter how much in the way of money gets dropped on them. Your way of life isn’t going to change because of them. You’re just going to get up tomorrow and do the same thing as always. Politicians very, very rarely break the mold. The exceptions for me this time around were Kansas and Florida- both of whom had the chances to throw off truly horrendous governers. (Which, of course, they didn’t. Kansas at least gave it a good go.)

Ballot initiatives, however- those have a real impact on people. Take Oregon, my new home for almost a year- we passed a version of the Equal Rights Amendment (about damn time, too) and a recreational marijuana legalization bill, as did Alaska and DC. (That makes five, if you count DC as a state for these purposes). (Florida also tried for it, but their vote lost, getting only 55% of the vote. Oh, Florida, when won’t you be an electoral laughing house? Oh, that’s right, never.) Both initiatives are going to have a huge effect on voters. The latter will also be a huge blow to for-profit prisons, which can only be a plus in my book.

So perhaps saying meh was a little disengenious- I genuinely do care about ballot initiatives. They actually change the framework of our society in a small but noticeable way. (Or even not so small). Voting for candidates… well, it’s just a casting call for C-Span, really.