Voting for stupidity

YOU WEREN'T one of those suckers who voted last week, were you? Wearing that dorky sticker on your chest all day like you just got named school safety guard? The first clue that you've been tricked into helping people in authority keep their power is when you're given a badge. It wasn't as though the bus driver slapped an "I Rode in the Front!" sticker on Rosa Parks.

When you voted last Tuesday, you weren't making the world better. Giving blood, volunteering, donating, buying a car without an alarm -- these are things that improve your community. At best, you got to promote your own belief system about eight issues, or -- more likely -- you promoted your belief system about one issue and randomly guessed on the other ones.

The main thing you did vote for was more voting. Every percentage point of voter turnout is another justification for continuing this voting fad that has taken hold of California as irrationally as Uggs.

I've lived in this city for 10 months, and I've already been asked to vote three times -- in a nonelection year. People in ancient Athens didn't vote that much, and their entertainment choices were limited to stories they could make up about star patterns. The only justifiable reason for asking Americans to vote that often is to select our idols.

And that's not the only lesson California has failed to learn from Simon Cowell. The campaign for last Tuesday's election cost more than $250 million -- the most expensive in California history -- and yet it was incredibly boring. You can't expect us to show up to vote on issues that utterly fail to be compelling. There's a reason you don't vote at the end "Hope & Faith."

Now, the 2003 gubernatorial recall, \o7that\f7 was an election. The $60 million of taxpayer money reaped massive returns in entertainment. That kind of budget should only get you a "Daddy Day Care" or a "Hellboy 2." But we got a Sacramento "Cannonball Run," starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Larry Flynt, Gary Coleman, Gallagher, Angelyne, Peter Ueberroth, a porn star and a sumo wrestler. Plus I'm pretty sure that Dom DeLuise was playing that Cruz Bustamante character.

But as good as the recall was, no studio chief would have greenlighted these last three trips to the polls. In March, L.A. held a mayoral election between moderate Democrats who used to be roommates and agreed on everything. And, two months later, they had the guts to put out a sequel.