typographical error

a couple of weeks ago jake and i filled out updated voter registration cards with our new address.  we actually got into a tiff the morning i was going to mail them because we were both rushed and i was trying to get him to sign his and he was distracted.  i gave up and left the cards sitting on the table and when i got home that evening they were gone.  

last week as i was sorting the mail into "mine" and "his" piles, i saw that we'd received our new cards.  i dropped jake's card into his pile and didn't think any more of it.

then yesterday afternoon i happened across jake's card again.  i glanced at it and in the "political affiliation" box i saw, "REP."

i was completely taken aback.  was this why he mailed his own registration card that morning?  why did he change his political affiliation?  and why did he feel like he had to hide it from me?  and most importantly for the love of all that is good and right in the world how did i end up married to a republican?

i debated about whether to ask him about it for all of forty-five seconds because i'm impulsive and i can't keep my mouth shut.  

"jake?  can i ask you something?" 

he gives me the, Crap, Here We Go look.

"did you change your political affiliation to republican?"

"no.  why?"

i showed him the card and he was baffled.  i was relieved.  a short phone call to the county election board and we had it all straightened out.  a typographical error on their part.  [aside: or was it? wink wink from the only state in the country where every single county went mccain.]

but the whole situation made me think: why was i so deeply disturbed when i saw the new voter registration card?  i felt downright betrayed, and why?  jake has a right to affiliate with whatever political party he pleases.  it doesn't define him.  i still love him.  my family has existed peacefully for generations in a deeply bipartisan household - we are democrats and libertarians and republicans, baptists and catholics and unitarians, hurricanes and sooners and cowboys.  and that's just my immediate family.

and what difference did it make if he was misregistered, anyway?  it would just screw up a few useless statistical polls, and he'd only be eligible to vote in the republican primary.

then it occurred to me - would it be such a bad thing if only democrats voted in the republican primary, and only republicans voted in the democratic primary?  what a unifying experience, being responsible for choosing the other party's candidates.  we'd end up with elected officials who, ideologically, would be much closer to the nation as  whole, rather than espousing views on behalf of only this party or that party.  they'd have to pander equally to all of us.  it would be, in mathematical terms, an election based on mean and not mode.  an averaging event.

maybe i'll start a grassroots campaign, then, to have all my democratic friends register as republicans and start really messing with the republican primaries.  

but then democrats will just start voting for the republican candidates and vice versa, and the whole exercise will have been pointless.  it's interesting to think about, though.

hillary clinton - REP - 2016.