I'm going over next week's ballot to see if there's any issues I ought to be thinking about.

There's some paper on Judge Nigro, enough so I'm thinking of voting "no". The other judge, Newman, seems inoffensive if dull. That's the whole and total of state items on the ballot. Eh, off years.

Countywide, it's the big district attorney face-off, as these things tend to be lifetime offices unless the DA gets caught with a sheep, or, you know, disappears suspiciously off the face of the earth. Which, I suppose, would still make it a lifetime office in the latter case... Arnold hasn't done anything since the primaries to make me think anything more of her than I did at the time. The one debate note I looked into had her complaining that a police union endorsement of her opponent, Madeira, wasn't actually an endorsement by the police. Not impressive. Which is sort of a shame, because Madeira hasn't done anything to get me enthused about backing him, either - I'm not particularly fond of a prosecutor who seems to specialize primarily in drug cases. Madeira probably gets it in a tight race to the bottom, unless he's found with a sheep before next week.

Geez, there's a race between a Lose and a Luse for jury commissioner. That's ripe for typo-driven upset. Ann Lose, the Republican, is the incumbent, and I remember her being a perfectly amiable and inoffensive presence at my last two jury call-ups. I'm going to try to remember the right spelling, and vote for the incumbent.

Incidentally, there's a Patrica Lose running for tax collector in Bellefonte on a write-in campaign - I saw two of her signs while walking on Curtin Hill yesterday. I expect they're some sort of relatives. I've seen too much of how much of a pain-in-the-ass write-in ballots are for the ladies who run the election to be enthused about that campaign. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to *be* a tax collector on the ballot - what happened to Thal? To make it even more confusing, Patricia Lose is also on the Bellefonte West ballot for Judge of Elections. Admittedly, Judge of Elections is definitely not a full-time position, and I think Tax Collector might be; it's definitely more of a year-round sort of thing.

As for the rest of the local choices, only Bellefonte West gets any choices to speak of - we actually have more council candidates than council seats, and we have a contest for inspector of elections - lucky us. I think I'm going to vote for Leah Ranio - I slightly know both candidates, and she seems the better choice.

As for the council candidates, we have the Republican incumbents DeCusati and Heidt versus a Democratic challenger, Joanne Tosti-Vasey. Tosti-Vasey doesn't look familiar, and she compares poorly to the relative newcomer, DeCusati, who replaced an incumbent who died in office. Looks like the Repubs for council.

We have, of course, no choices for school district - that was all resolved during the primaries.

Meh. Boring year.