Vote today (while your vote counts): Column

When I woke up this morning and turned on the radio to be reminded it was Election Day, I had a faint second of hope that I had somehow slept until November 2016 and had been spared 12 months of incessant TV attack ads. No such luck.

Instead, today is one of those seemingly unimportant election days when statewide elections are few and there are no federal elections. Most registered voters won’t show up to make their opinions known.

That’s a shame because politicians of all kinds — even county sheriffs, local mayors and state legislators — need regular adult supervision. You just have to look around the country to a few elections to see why.

In New York, voters get to pick three state legislators to replace incumbents who are now convicts. The criminals among our political class depend on us not paying attention.

In Michigan, voters will decide whether to rehire two legislators who previously got the boot when their steamy affair went public. There is a lesson here: If we don’t watch closely, it is the wrong kind of politico who is most likely to reproduce.

In Florida, voters in one of the state’s biggest cities, Orlando, may wake up on Wednesday to find that the same man has been elected to be mayor four times in a row, putting him on track to become another of America's "mayors for life." He may be a great guy, but every office needs new blood every other decade or so.

In Ohio, most people are talking about recreational pot being on the ballot, but what’s really interesting is that the people who wrote the ballot initiative were high at the time. If passed, the law will do as much to make a handful of rich people richer than it will to let college kids relax after exams.

And even the elections where you might walk into the voting booth not knowing the people on the ballot, our choices can have national implications.

In Kentucky, to the untrained eye, it looks like there is a governor’s race going on, but in reality it is a proxy war over Obamacare. Love it, or hate it, whatever happens to the politicians whose names most Americans don’t know will suddenly be a big deal to all the politicians whose names we wish we didn’t know.

POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media

In Virginia, the elections for state legislature are going to suddenly matter nationally if they hand the state’s Democratic governor the ability to pass new restrictions on firearms.

So, yeah, I know you don’t feel like voting. I don’t feel like voting. (I am writing this to work myself up a head of steam to go vote this afternoon.)

But there is a good reason to go vote today. The fewer people who show up, the more each vote counts. Today’s election is your best shot to cast a ballot that will make a difference, far better, in fact, than in next November’s election.

David Mastio, Paste BN’s Deputy Editorial Page Editor, will vote in Herndon, Va., where he recently moved, for the first time today.