Today is primary day in Minnesota, and I exercised my immense personal political clout by voting. The previous statement contains 35% less irony today, because there weren’t a lot of voters out (the counter on the machine at my voting place said [at about 4:45 p.m.] that they’d gotten 631 voters so far).

In the general election, especially in a year like this, I might be tempted to consider my vote a molecule in a bucket. But today I wielded considerable (relative) influence.

There was a certain amount of agitation, among Republicans, to cross over to the Democrat column and vote for the woman who’s challenging Al Franken in the Senate race. I did not do this. Not only do I object to the tactic on principle (as I’ve said here before), but I’m very happy to have Norm Coleman running against Al Franken. If he can’t beat Al Franken, he might as well resign now and become a blogger. Or a consultant. Or a consultant to bloggers.

I take particular interest in the judicial elections, because the whole judicial election system in Minnesota is a mystery hidden within a scam. I think the law requiring a candidate for a judgeship not to reveal any opinion he may hold has been loosened up a bit, but it’s still pretty hard to figure out how most of the candidates intend to interpret the law, based on their campaign statements.

There are hints, though, if you take time to deconstruct their campaign web sites. One tip, for instance, is if they state very strongly that politics should have no part in the selection of judges.

I’m pretty sure that’s code for “I’m going to make the law up as I go along, and I know you probably won’t vote for me if I tell you that.”