This morning we were treated to our first-of-the-season snowfall:

It’s wasn’t much, but in the water-starved State of Jefferson it is a thing of beauty. Let’s hope it is a harbinger of colder and wetter times!

It wasn’t until yesterday that everyone agreed to call the election. The Founding Fathers did not want the people to select the president, they wanted the states to select the president. That means we have to sit around and wait for razor-thin margins in places like Pennsylvania or Georgia or Arizona to get settled before we get a result. The popular vote was a clear win for Biden, but like 2016, a few thousand votes in a few dozen counties in a handful of states decided the outcome. Trump was able to eke out an electoral win last time with that math, despite losing the popular vote, but this time the coin flipped the other way.

And I don’t know about you, but I think a coin flip is a lousy way to decide things. I suppose, in a politically divided country, close national elections will be the new norm.

Biden’s lead over Trump is a little over four million votes, which is about the difference in the California vote alone. Californians cast about fourteen million votes in total, roughly one-tenth of the national total.

I’m not sure whether to be embarrassed by the painfully antiquated voting systems in our country or charmed by their rustic quaintness. I suppose a slick, new system where everyone could vote from their phone, laptop, or a computer at the public library would come with its own set of problems, so let’s just do the best job we can with what we have. Everyone does banking and other personal stuff via the world wide web these days, I suspect at some point we’ll vote that way too, but that’s probably farther away than I think.

I was in the 8th grade in 1972 and that was the first national election I paid any real attention to. I was too young to vote in 1976 and cast my first ballot in the 1978 gubernatorial contest (for Jerry Brown!). I’ve voted for a president eleven times (’80, ’84, ’88, ’92, ’96, ’00, ’04, ’08, ’12, ’16, ’20) since then, with my candidate winning five of those contests. What was it I was saying about coin flips? I like those odds better.

Meanwhile, with the race decided we can get back to other things. Like watching the weather and hoping for lots more snow!