Archives for October 20th, 2006

My voting slip.

A few days ago, Brian told me that dirty, no-good foreigners will be eligible to vote in Slovenia’s regional elections this Sunday. I assumed he was kidding or crazy (or a healthy mixture of the two) but it turns out he was goddamn right.

This week, to my surprise, I got a call to electoral arms in the mail. So, on Sunday, I will cast my first ever vote in a Slovenian election, ever!

I couldn’t have picked a more challenging one. Whereas Ljubljana is fielding 21 candidates and Celje 41, the Dame on the Drava is boasting 137 — half of them from Glas Žensk (Woman’s Voice), the only party that has more members than people actually voting for it.

What’s also interesting about this election is that I can’t talk about who’s getting my vote, because there’s about one degree of separation between me and a lot of the candidates. That’s the problem with small cities: everyone is so interconnected that things can get sticky very, very quickly. Avoiding conflicts of interest here seems impossible to do.

At any rate, regardless of whether you’re a Slovene or a lousy scumbag foreigner, don’t forget to vote on Sunday. Remember what George Jean Nathan said: “Bad politicians are elected by good citizens who do not vote.”

That’s goddamn right.

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UPDATE: Comments have been closed, in order to avoid any noncompliance with strict Slovenian electoral laws on “blackouts” before the vote.