State’s politics no longer like game of tic-tac-toe

The editorial cartoon at right is an attempt by cartoonist John Kennedy to add a little levity to the complexity voters will face this political year in Mississippi. And this cartoon only portrays the race for District Four Supervisor in Panola County.

This will be a political year like none we’ve seen before. The plethora of Republican candidates at the state level is going to spread thin voters whose favorite local candidate is running as a Democrat.

Four Republican candidates for governor will be on the ballot in the Republican primary seeking to become their party’s nominee for Governor. If a voter has a strong preference among them he’d like to vote for then he must forego voting for his neighbor who is running for supervisor as a Democrat. And even if his neighbor gets in the Democratic runoff election August 23 and the voter’s favorite Republican gubernatorial candidate has been eliminated from that party’s runoff election, he can’t cross party lines to vote as a Democrat in the primary runoff election to help his neighbor.

 And so on, all across Mississippi. Then there’s the November 8 General Election where there will be no runoffs. In that contest between the nominee from each party plus all of the candidates who have chosen to run as independents, the candidate with the greatest number of votes wins. No runoffs.

Someone has observed that politics used to be like playing tic-tac-toe. Now it’s more like playing chess. Or in Panola, Panopoly.