Confessions of a lame voter.

Today, I'd like to ask your advice on something, because I'm feeling...a little inadequate.

I often utilize this forum to rail against America's political system and it's participants, usually as seen through my fogged up, lefty colored lenses.

Which is why I'm experiencing some pointy little needle jabs of hypocrisy.

You see, I am a partial voter. I'm a half-baked, half-cocked, lightly informed semi-participant in America's participatory democracy. I'm that god awful eighty calorie beer of voters.

With the fall elections still ten days distant, I rescued my voters' pamphlet this morning from its submersion in the quicksand of "I don't want to look at this right now" mail on our office desk.

Do you read your voters' pamphlet? Really? Good for you.

I actually do, too; just not all of it. Okay, maybe about ten percent. I like to read the stuff written by this man named "Goodspaceguy," who runs for office nearly every election. He's campaigned on the platform of colonizing space as our planet's only hope and has challenged incumbents in Washington State for the offices of United States Senator, Governor and King County Executive. You go, Goodspaceguy.

In addition, I frequently base my decision upon nothing more than by whom a candidate or ballot measure is endorsed. An anti-taxation mercenary named Tim Eyman has gutted Washington's tax base virtually single-handedly, and therefore I refuse to acknowledge any measure or candidate he lauds.

Plus, I can't stand to look at him and I fantasize about him forever disappearing from the Evergreen State and waking up in a war torn village somewhere in Sudan where government waste is non-existent...since government is non-existent.

Sometimes an organization underwrites a cause, so I read those carefully, since they may appear quite benign on the surface. If some guy is running for school board director, and he's been endorsed by the Organization for Knowledge in Schools Cooperative Heritage Order of Legions and Groups United in National Security, or O.K.S.C.H.O.O.L.G.U.N.S., I probably won't darken his circle with my Sharpie fine point.

You probably also won't see my vote cast for anyone heralded by the Bureau of Land and Management Enterprises Toward Health and Ecological Proliferation of Organizational Reliability, or B.L.A.M.E.T.H.E.P.O.O.R.

Back to my original solicitation. I need your advice about how you decide for whom you vote when you don't even know what it is their desired position does. I understand the duties of mayor, county assessor and city council; the big ones.

But how about "Wastewater Commissioner?" I'm sure it's a highly specialized and important position, and as long as little bits of mercury and Prozac-laden toilet paper aren't chunking up my Britta filter, then good job, Commish.

And based on some of the wastewater I've after having spent four years in a fraternity, maybe Goodspaceguy could figure out a way to rocket it completely out of the earth's atmosphere.

"Cemetery Commissioner" is on this fall's ballot, as well. Again, I must claim ignorance. It's got to be more than some dude with a walkie talkie who calls security when those kids are smoking a fat one at Jimi Hendrix's grave again.

Please, I need your help. I'm tired of being lame.

And it's really a shame the candidate above for Tukwila School Board chose not to provide a photo.