Next Tuesday, New Jersey will hold an election in which all the seats in the State Assembly and State Senate are up for grabs. In a rational world, one would think that in a state that is corrupt to the core, a state that has taxed its citizens to the breaking point, a state that has taxed and regulated businesses to the point where it makes sense for businesses to go elsewhere, a state that is mired in BILLIONS of dollars in unfunded liabilities, a state where the governor acts more like the president of the state workers’ labor unions than the chief executive, the incumbents would be shaking in their boots.

Well, I looked over my sample ballot, and it turns out that the Republican Party didn’t even nominate a candidate for the State Assembly (two seats) or the State Senate (one seat) in my district. I will be voting for the candidates “nominated by petition.” I have no idea who they are, but I will vote for them because, even if they come from the planet Mars, they would be preferable to the three lemons who currently hold office.

The election also contains four referenda, three of which are worded so that the lames who go to the polls won’t realize that all three are designed to pick their pockets even more. One is an “additional sales tax to fund property tax reform” (I kid you not). The other two are bond issues (putting the state further into debt is a swell idea).

The fourth referendum is interesting. It is a referendum to amend the State Constitution concerning the right to vote. Currently, the state constitution prevents an “idiot or insane person” from voting. The new language would deny suffrage to “a person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting.”

Passage of the amendment will ensure that the idiots and crazy bastards who brought us the current crop of crooks and jackasses will have their right to vote constitutionally protected.

No wonder so many people have chosen to vote with their feet and get out of this state as if it were on fire.