I traded my vote! Since California will definitely go to Hillary and the Colorado presidential race is close, I agreed to register a protest vote for a Coloradan in return for her voting for Hillary. There’s an App for that: Never Trump. My vote buddy would like to write in Bernie, but I can’t do that in California, so we agreed I would vote for her second choice, Gary Johnson. I mailed my ballot in this weekend.

The entrepreneur who came up with this app, Amit Kumar, is convinced that a Trump victory would be an existential threat to the US. I am convinced it would be an existential threat to our retirement account. Yes, I am confessing to voting my narrow financial interests, and it’s not making me feel proud. Yes, there are other reasons one might vote as I did, but this is not a political blog.

Everyone in California can choose to vote by mail. The state also allowed people to register through October 24 this year. I’ve heard voting in person is a bit of a social event here, and I hope to get a first-hand account from my husband on November 8. For me though, the at-home ballot was worthwhile because there are so many choices.

To help me vote on 7 candidate races, 17 state ballot initiatives, and 4 county ballot initiatives, I received a 222-page book from the State of California and a 64-page book from Santa Cruz County. I studied on and off for about 3 weeks, talked to some people I know personally and to some advocates I encountered, and marked my practice ballot as I made each decision.

Several of the initiatives overlap, and 2 are completely at odds, necessitating a two-by-two Punnett square explaining how the laws will be affected by each of the 4 possible combinations of outcomes. Some seem to stress socio-economic divides, such as the local transportation measure pitting bus riders against car commuters. Others highlight the corporate-individual chasm, such as the statewide anti-smoking proposal.

Since my decisions are made and my vote is awa’, as the Scots might say, I can’t change my mind based on anything that happens this week. Probably that’s an good thing. I can stop paying attention, stop feeling like I need to be informed so I can vote. It’s odd to think that a lot of people never worry about that, but maybe they just don’t have time for it.