The Idaho Primary Elections were today. The turnout was expected to be very light because it’s the day after a three-day holiday weekend and there aren’t many contested races. Idaho’s primary elections are partisan … that is, you vote either the Republican ballot or the Democratic ballot. On the Republican side the only contested race was for United States Senator to replace the infamous Senator Craig of Minneapolis Airport bathroom fame. On the Democratic side the only contested race was for County Commissioner. The Democrats held their caucuses in February to cast their vote for the Democratic Presidential Nominee, so although both Hillary and Barrack were on the ballot, It was only a popularity contest. There was one other person on the Democratic ballot for president … a convict in prison who filled out the form and paid the fee to be put on the ballot. He’ll get a percentage of the vote, I’m sure.

All states seem to have their election foibles; some just get more press than others. Recently Idaho’s Senator Larry Craig has garnered more than enough coverage. Because Idaho usually votes Republican on a state-wide basis (Pocatello generally votes Democratic), whomever wins the Republican nomination for Senator Craig’s seat will probably be the winner in November … that is, unless Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee and he brings long coat tails to Idaho (fairly slim possibility, actually).

Information about the candidates here in this area is also pretty sparse. To that end I’ve decided to try and put together a website covering all the candidates for the general election in November. It’s been a lot of work already and there’s a huge amount of work left to do to actually get a website for this built followed by a lot of work to get the data populated. But, I’m pretty sure that most people in Idaho have no idea who Keith Russell Judd is, but because he’s on the ballot for the nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate running against Hillary Clinton (intensely disliked in Idaho) and Barack Obama (liked well enough, but perceived to be inexperienced and not a friend of farmers), Judd the Convict will get a number of votes. Question is, how many people will vote for him just because he isn’t Hillary and isn’t Obama? I’ll blog about this again tomorrow.

The planned website will make that kind of information, plus a whole lot more, much more available. For instance, Karen Cordell is running for County Commissioner against the incumbent Len Whitworth. I was at a Rotary luncheon today and asked the seven other people at the table (a decidedly non-scientific sample) if they knew which of the two was the incumbent and no one knew. No one knew who Karen Cordell was or why she was running, even though she’s got signs all over town and has had some local press coverage.
Further, two people at the table didn’t even know that the Primary Election was being held today. I certainly can’t make a difference for today’s election, and might not be able to do much for next November’s election, but by then I should have the mechanics of the website worked out and be ready for all future elections in the area.

I voted, though, as did Nina. It’ll be a strange and unusual election day when we don’t get to the polls on election day!