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When I marked up the primary ballot here at the start of Indecision 2026, I was genuinely expecting to end up with a ballot that had zero winning candidates selected.

And it actually looked like I was going to achieve that perfect score right from the off in the primary to replace Sir Thom the Chicken-Hearted as I knew full well that none of the other candidates who wasn’t flogged to me in multiple mailings as the preferred poodle of the sweet-potato complected chief executive had about as much chance of winning the primary as the Quebec Nordiques have to return to the NHL in my lifetime.

My choice was second in the voting well off the pace and no one else was even close to breaking the low single digits.

That was easy…we always knew the main event in November would be between Trump’s poodle and Gov Roy Cooper.

I also biffed the selection of the candidate for seat 1 on the NC Court of Appeals by trying to show Campbell Law School some love but alas, my vote was apparently the kiss of death for the Camel candidate. Better luck next time to the former nobody from nowhere…

After successfully peeing in the Republican pool of partisan races, that left the non-partisan races on the ballot to try to keep the perfect score of choosing the losers.

Once again Raleigh City Council District C was offering up the usual incumbent who was going to win in a walk, the plucky challenger who really seems to be a nice guy and full of good ideas but doesn’t have the advantage of incumbency or funding and received my traditional “kiss of death” vote, and the two others who will not be progressing through to the general election in November.

So far, so good!

That is until I came to voting for two Raleigh City Council At-Large seats and this is where the algorithm I normally use for voting completely failed me in my quest to have my first ever complete loser ballot.

My voting algorithm is fairly simple:

• If there is a candidate that totally jazzes me regardless of their party affiliation, they’re going to get my vote. And in nearly 38 years of voting, I can think of only two candidates that were so impressive to me that they won my vote without hesitation or reservation: H Ross Perot (because I’d actually met him as he was big into repatriating POWs from Vietnam but also because he was quite intelligent) and our current Attorney General Jeff Jackson who had impressed me mightily as being very pragmatic and wanting to find the best possibly solution to real problems during his time in the General Assembly regardless of partisan implications which is so rare a quality these days and would have been nice to see continue in Washington in the House of Representatives had he not been gerrymandered out of his seat by the General Assembly in 2024.
• Given that the vast majority of ballot papers are populated by partisan hacks and people of questionable quality, my vote is generally for the women in the particular race to lose. If there is someone of the feminine persuasion on the ballot who has the qualifications and experience to do the job, she’s going to have to work awfully hard to get me to not vote for her because it’s been my experience that the majority of female candidates tend to think of what’s best for the community/country and solving the real problems at home that are working against their families than the men do. This is where I’m usually hoping my “kiss of death” vote isn’t because I do actually want the women to get elected unless they’re hopelessly insane or completely useless which makes me thankful I don’t live in South Carolina or Georgia. 😉
• More often than not, I’m done picking candidates at this point. But should I have to resign myself to voting for a male candidate, it’s often a case of finding the lesser of the imbeciles if not outright evil bastards on offer and holding my nose when I’m casting my vote. The candidate’s voting record (if they have one) and relevant experience gets a deep dive and more often than not I find myself voting for someone with military experience unless they’re also hopelessly insane or completely useless. At least the ones that have had some time in the military and managed to avoid being dishonourably discharged or court martialed have some sense of what it means to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and serve the people of the country.
• Should all the other factors be relatively equal and hasn’t resulted in a selection by this point, then the person likely getting my vote is the that has harassed me the least whether it’s through the post or on video adverts. This year was a case in point that should be a stark warning to the Whatley campaign or anyone else who wants to trumpet a particular endorsement to independents who are quite put off by the one giving the endorsement. Carpet bombing us with daily reminders of who we don’t want to see elected is not an effective strategy and it’s a huge waste of money…it merely hardens our resolve to see them go down in flames.

Soooooo…two women amongst the gaggle running for At-Large and they’re pretty decent in terms of experience and time on the council and they got my votes.

And wouldn’t you know it, they topped the table of four candidates going through to the general election where they’ll probably win there as well.

Darn it!

At least then I’m going to want them to win in the general election (given the algorithm above) whereas my usual primary vote is a tactical one to weed out the whackos or vote against the bastards as I took great pleasure doing throughout the 1990s when the Senior Senator from Right Field’s (Jesse Helms) opponent got my vote without much of a second thought in every election Helms’ name ever appeared on the ballot.

I saw someone arguing that such a tactical vote is a waste in a primary and I would agree with that if we had elections in North Carolina that were actually competitive.

But we don’t and as long as the Jones Street Mob can keep monkeying with the maps so the politicians can select the voters they want with surgical precision rather than the voters choosing the politicians as it should be, tactical voting is the only tool we have to at least try to prevent the worst candidates from having a chance at being elected in the general election.

They’ve gerrymandered maps even more where the maps were already arguably the worst partisan gerrymander in the nation to ensure that not only are the races not at all competitive, they’re rigged to favour Republicans in a state that is consistently as purple and 50/50 as it gets.

Our House delegation will be 11-3 Republican (from the current 10-4 Republican delegation) with the gerrymandering of the 1st District to flip it. And of those races, only *ONE* is even close to being considered a competitive race.

When we already know what our delegation is going to look like when the primaries are done regardless of the fact that the general election is still eight months away because the politicians picked their voters, that’s a very bad day for actual democracy and any chance of electing people who are serious about solving the many problems this country has.

Until our country outlaws politicians picking voters and gerrymandering of any sort and does something about the flood of dark money buying candidates and political offices on behalf of the obscenely wealthy, that problem isn’t going away anytime soon.