I'd like to start this week by thanking the poll workers for making elections work. It's a long day putting up with people like me.
I guess it's a good thing you didn't have to put up with many of us.
There are 3,368,119 registered voters in Kentucky. Only 792,688 of them voted in Tuesday's primary. That's slightly over a whopping 23% of Kentucky voters.
That seems kind of puny in the grand scheme of things, doesn't it? But maybe it's not so bad.
Let's start by figuring 5% of those registered voters are dead. You're right, I'm being conservative. Accounting for 168,406 cemetary voters, we're dangerously close to 25%.
But wait! Kentucky's closed primaries means anybody not registered to one of the two monopolies isn't likely to show up only to get to vote for an appelate judge. Where's the fun in that?
According to the May 1 Kentucky voter rolls, 289,313 of us are not registered Republicrat or Demican. Knock those off the top and rounding up gets us to 26%.
It's going to take some tricky math to get to 30% at the rate we're going. And let's face it, a 30% turnout isn't great.
Believe it or not, though, we're getting better. We might not have hit the "up to 30%" turnout prediction Allison Grimes made, but we still outpaced the last two primary seasons.
Barely 20% of Kentucky voters turned out for the 2016 primaries and an embarrassing 12% showed up for the 2015 primaries. That'd be the one Matt Bevin beat James Comer by 83 votes.
Wonder how many Republican voting teachers would like a way back machine?
So maybe there's some hope for democracy in Kentucky after all. We really did have more people show up for this primary than any since 2010. That's a good sign in a non-presidential or gubernatorial election year.
I wasn't thinking of these things after I voted. I was thinking more of the list of chores I needed to get done as I pulled into my driveway.
I barely noticed Meat walking around the side of his house, head down staring at the ground. Every couple of steps he'd stomp his feet and jump up and down a couple times, turn in a circle and move on.
I stopped and watched him, barely 20 feet away, a few minutes. He didn't notice me until I spoke.
"Whatcha up to Meat? Stompin ant hills?"
Meat didn't look up. "Checking for sink holes."
"Sink holes? We've got no sink holes in Elkhorn?"
Tater appeared on the front porch, grinning broadly.
"I told him not to make any White House Sink Hole jokes until he checked the yard. Don't wanna mess with karma you know."
No you don't. But this makes me wonder about those folk who look for signs. You know the ones that can't make a decision or see what's really going on around them until some random thing happens, like a double rainbow or a bird flying into the house.
I'd say as far as signs go, a sink hole at the White House makes for a fifty foot high neon flashing billboard.