Vote early, vote often.

Okay, I've done my civic duty. I've voted. All in all, a fairly pointless charade. My ballot included 7 separate races, with 9 positions available: State Senate, House of Delegates, commonwealth's attorney, sheriff, board of supervisors, school board, and soil & water conservation district (for which three seats were being voted on). And a grand total of 10 candidates. Only the school board position was contested. And while I know I should care about the school board, I don't especially, as I don't have children in school.

As I didn't really feel like writing my name in on six different races, I wrote myself in only once, for State Senate. My guess is that I won't win.

At least I didn't have to vote for the school board position blindly - the republicans were present, handing out "sample ballots" listing their candidates, so I knew who to vote against.

The only good news is that they've made a little progress in helping you not cast an invalid ballot. In my precinct, they use butterfly ballots, complete with punching out the chad. They've changed their procedure a little bit in light of the 2000 election: when you cast your ballot, the machine checks to see whether you have cast any overvotes (e.g., twice for a single position) and will reject your ballot right then, so you'll have a chance to try again and replace the ballot with one that doesn't have overvotes on it.