2012 Primary Day Voting

So Today is the Primaries plus multiple millage requests.

I voted this morning and while there was no lineup to vote there was a pretty steady flow.

Amazingly, I was able to check the box on the application for a ballot that I was a US citizen without any confusion whatsoever. Who would have thunk it?

Of course, this primary season involves much gnashing of racial teeth. With the loss of population in Detroit, two of Detroit's Congressional districts are being gerrymandered to remain majority-minority districts but they now snake their way into the suburbs, including where I live, dooming me to a Democrat Congressman forever. Just when my area is beginning to think a Democrat isn't the way to go, we get this.

This means that the Majority-Minority districts are swallowing up other Democrat districts which could mean the incumbent (White) congressman in those districts is facing off against the Black congressman and the White reps might just even win.

Much racial disharmony ensues, as reported in the Detroit News: Metro Detroit may lose black U.S. reps.

Voters in Metro Detroit will determine Tuesday whether Michigan will lose black representation in the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in nearly five decades.

U.S. Rep. Hansen Clarke, a biracial freshman belonging to black and Asian congressional caucuses, faces a challenge in the 14th Congressional District from U.S. Rep. Gary Peters, a white Bloomfield Township resident who is backed by major labor unions as well as Detroit elected officials and black pastors.

Michigan is losing one congressional seat due to redistricting, forcing the two into a faceoff.

And in the new 13th District, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, the longest serving African-American member of Congress, is running against four challengers, with polls suggesting his closest competition is Glenn Anderson, a state senator from Westland who is white.

Clarke and Conyers are running in Michigan's only majority-minority districts under the 1965 Voting Rights Act that protects minority political participation. If a white candidate wins in a VRA district, "it would definitely be an anomaly in American politics," said Devin McCarthy of voter reform think tank FairVote.

A Peters and Anderson victory would be pretty remarkable but in my opinion good for Michigan. Peters is already an effective congressman (if I'm now doomed to a Democrat Congressman, I might as well hope for a decent and effective one) and it is well past time for the divisive Conyers to go.

In addition, there's also various millage requests on the ballot including one rather contentious on for Oakland County to pay property taxes to support the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The results of this primary should be quite interesting indeed.