I have to confess, I do get a kick out of the horse-race atmosphere of election day. I’m looking forward to heading home, taking a quick nap, and then heading out to a local pub to watch the returns come in. Beats the ponies any day. Maybe just for the hell of it I’ll swing by the Green / D.C. Statehood candidate‘s shindig. But it is a bit tedious listening to people ask, with a cluck of the tongue, whether you’ve done your “civic duty,” or (worse) reminding you that “every vote makes a difference” — a proposition so patently and risibly false that I have no idea how anyone capable of dressing themselves manages to utter it with a straight face. The prize for most irritating, however, goes to the smug little prats who like to tell you that “you have no right to complain” if you didn’t vote. Heh? So even if all the choices are equally bad, and the odds of influencing the outcome a statistical joke, I’ve got to waste a half hour of my day in a meaningless gesture so as to earn the entitlement to point the fact out? I prefer my rule: “if you’re halfwitted enough to repeat ludicrous cliches like like ‘you have no right to complain if you didn’t vote,’ you have no right to pollute my media space with your inane opinions on politics or any other subject.” Anyway, you’ll see why I did get something of a grin out of a few choice quotations on voting turned up by friend and master economist Glen Whitman.