Today, I had the rather surreal experience of voting in a New Jersey voting booth. It was surreal because I felt like I was at John King’s touchscreen on CNN, pressing things on an oversized board to make them light up. It was fun.

It sure beats the heck out of Alameda County’s old fill-in-the-blank-with-a-pen-till-you-run-out-of-ink system. The green lights were very clear and made it obvious where and how to vote. Em said she worried that her big board display may have been misaligned or just gone off into the ether, but I think it’s just as easy to burn or discard paper as it is to fail to count something.

My vote really counted, today, though, because I was more than 0.05% of a movement! At current tallies, with 99% reporting, only 1,987 others joined me in voting for Gregory Pason for Governor of the great state of New Jersey. It looks like he’ll finish 9th (of 12 candidates).

I considered voting for Chris Daggett, the independent candidate you’ve heard of in the race. Despite poll numbers topping out at around 18-20%, being widely regarded as the aggregate winner of the debates, and the endorsement of the largest NJ-based paper, Daggett’s running a disappointing 5%+. He still beat Pason by a margin of about 66:1.

I liked Daggett as an independent vote, as a third party (rather than, say, a ninth party), as the man who won the endorsement of the Sierra Club and supports a lot of reasonably progressive things. But ultimately his focus on tax reduction and reshifting burdens to regressive methods was just too onerous for me to sign on to. While I liked his impact on the campaign, I wasn’t really convinced that I’d like him as Governor, and thus voting for him would just be piling on to someone who people had heard of the same way most voters pile on to someone they think has a chance of winning. Not the way I prefer to vote.

So I supported Pason, a man whose portion of the overall vote count was almost as small as my vote was a portion of his total support. There are about two-thousand people who would prefer socialism at this time in New Jersey, at least of those voting and bothering to show up for something like this, and those not choosing to compromise their vote or voice in some way or another.

It seems to bear recognizing at this juncture in history. I’m not saying Jersey will change or anything will, but it’s worth at least recording how things stand tonight. But the next time you hear anyone accused of socialism, it might bear noting how many people are actually supporting socialism, real socialism, these days.

And then you can tell them that you know a real socialist. If you don’t mind not speaking to them again.