So, I voted today. My very first voting experience! It went relatively smoothly. I walked down to my polling place, still in my running clothes, confirmed my district, signed my name below a copy of my signature, waited in line for 10 minutes, stepped behind the curtain, pulled the red lever to the right, marked all my votes, then pulled the lever back to the left. Ka-chunk.

Thing is, I wasn’t all that prepared. At least at first. I received a voting brochure in the mail this past week. A registered republican friend informed me only democrats received the flyer. (Don’t tell BYU, I want to surprise them.)

So, this morning I flipped through the flyer and checked out the candidates for mayor, public advocate, comptroller, and city council. Each of the candidates had a photo next to a description of her/his intentions for the office s/he wants to hold. I read through these descriptions, I got a sense of each of the platforms. When it came down to it, I decided to base my vote on two criteria:

1) Headshot – Which way is the candidate’s head turned? What kind of “look” is s/he giving the camera? Is there a personable connection? Hairline – receding, plugs? Hair color – natural, dyed, drastically dyed? Facial hair – neat trim on the men, neat or nonexistent on the women? Cheesy smile? Are all the teeth there? Natural smile? Cheesy seriousness? Genuine resolve?

2) Typos – it was enough that some of the candidates’ backgrounds made me question their … qualifiedityness, but when the writeups are missing words or have misspelled words, and when the fine print says the candidates submitted their own blurbs, that makes it hard for me to vote for them.

I did take into account other factors, such as difficulty in name pronunciation (can you say it five times fast?), criminal record (felonies versus misdemeanors, also counting visits to the principal’s office and number of demerits), cookie proclivity (pro? anti?).

You bet my vote’s going to count.

I promise, I took it seriously. Given my political party’s predisposition to rhetoric, I had to sift through some fluffy candidates to find more substantial ones. Admittedly, it took a little longer than I expected, but I felt I made some good choices.

Let’s hope so.