Plunk this!

I am not the one in our house to talk politics. (In fact, I avoid the topic when at all possible.) But this is so cool I just have to share.

Background: A Republican has not been elected to the Alexandria City Council in six years. No matter your political persuasion, I think we can all agree that a little political "balance" is a good thing, right?

Granted, there are some things the city does that I don't agree with, but for the most part I have no complaints. Alexandria is clean, the schools are good, traffic is manageable, crime is virtually nonexistent...what is there to complain about? Doesn't matter to me that it's been entirely run by Democrats. I don't really concern myself with city politics and I don't believe in voting for people or issues unless you're informed, so I've never voted for City Council before.

Until this year.

In February, I got the real estate assessment for our house and the value went down about six percent. (No, that's not bad compared to others and I'm not complaining, but it still went down for the first time since we owned it.) And what did the City Council do as a result? They raised taxes to compensate for the declining home values! So instead of paying, oh, about six percent less, I'm actually paying...more! That got me fired up, along with apparently every other fiscally-conservative person in this town. (In the case of proper political timing, the actual bill did not arrive until today -- the day after the election -- though I was paying attention enough to know what was coming.)

At any rate, about a month ago, we got a letter from one of the Republicans on the ballot letting us know he was running and asking for support - monetary or otherwise. We didn't send a check but did make a mental note to vote for him. Then a few weeks later, we got a letter from the Alexandria Republican Party (Chad's registered so he gets all this stuff -- I think I'm officially an Independent) with the scoop on their strategy:

There are six seats on the City Council and all were up for re-election. Up for election were six Democrats, two Republicans and two Independents, one being a Republican who can't say she is because she works for the federal government and can't "identify" herself with a particular party. Even though we technically could vote for six people, they said, vote only for the Republicans (and the one Independent). It's apparently called "plunking," also known as "bullet voting." Statistically, it's really smart: Vote only for the few you really want to win and let the Democrats, or whoever else is on the other side, cancel each other out...and things could get interesting.

So, yesterday, on the way back from the gym, we went to our polling place, voting for only three candidates--even though we could vote for six. It was kind of fun and I felt empowered. For the first time in my life, it seemed, my vote really did count for something.

And today, I open the paper to find...two of our people won! Papers are calling it an "election shocker" and even our über-liberal Washington Post conceded it was a "sign of resurgence" for the Republicans.

This was so fun, I think I might do it again sometime. Here's hoping my taxes go down first.