THE BELL CURVE:Good news for U.S.; bad news for us

Election Day Minus 2, 11 p.m.: Time to get out the big book, the one called “California General Election,” if I can find it. The one that arrived about a month ago and weighs more than “Gone With the Wind.” Two hundred pages of 6-point type I stashed somewhere. Need heavy motivation to crack this one. Like how should I feel about all these people seeking my affirmation that they stay on various state courts. Raymond J. Ikola, for example. Do I want him to keep his seat on the 4th Appellate District Court of Appeal? Or the Insurance Commissioner. Cruz Bustamante doesn’t do it for me. But who are these other guys, anyway? Do they all work for insurance companies? It’s late, and I’m tired. I’ll make a list for tomorrow. Start with Ikola and Bustamante. Oh, yes. And what, exactly, is a board of equalization?

Election Day Minus 1, 11:30 p.m.: Time to fill out the sample ballot so I won’t hold up the line of Republicans when I vote. Planned to get at it sooner. The Times did a breakdown of propositions awhile back. Lucid, easy to follow. I put it away somewhere, maybe with the UC Irvine basketball schedule, which starts election week. Can’t remember whether that was to remind me of the election or the basketball season. I should have looked for it earlier. Meanwhile, what I’ll do is fill out the easy ones, the ones I don’t need to research, and then deal with the others tomorrow morning when I’m fresh. After all, I have all day to get to my polling place.

Election Day, 10:30 a.m.: Let’s get it done. Remembered this morning that it doesn’t invalidate my ballot if I don’t vote in every race. So why not just pass on Judge Ikola and the board of equalization? That way I can go ahead and vote when normal people are at work. Shouldn’t be crowded then. And it isn’t. Eight voting cubicles and only two occupied. Poll workers chatting it up. I have my usual problems with technology and interrupt the chat to seek help. When I emerge, all the cubicles are empty. I leave without guilt over the contests I passed on and in the full knowledge that a majority of my choices aren’t going to win anyway — just one of the prices I pay for living in this magnificent climate.

Election Day, 4 p.m.: First returns start to dribble in from the East. I’ve had CNN’s talking heads — with sound muted — on all day so I can pick up on the action when it starts. I don’t much like CNN, but I would discover during this long day that it offered the only running coverage I could find on the tube. Apparently this critical election wasn’t deemed of enough interest by TV to interfere with the soap operas and game shows. (When returns were hot and heavy later in the day, Fox was running “The Simpsons.”) But a few minutes after 4, I might have been the only Newport-Mesa resident who knew that Sen. George Allen was losing in Virginia, the first sign of what was about to happen all across the country.

Election Day, 8 p.m.: When our polls closed, my blessed state of Indiana had just turned out enough Congressional Republican incumbents to put the Democrats over the top in the House of Representatives. And I was caught in the grips of a U.S. Senate race in which four states were still undecided with less than a 1% gap between the candidates in each contest. To take over the Senate, the Democrats had to win all four, which is rather like winning a World Series after losing the first three games. Nothing, anywhere yet, on our local elections.

Election Day, 10 p.m.: Still nothing local on the TV newscasts, so I had to crank up my computer and check the Pilot website. I don’t vote in Costa Mesa, but it was the first place I looked — and the news was all bad. Wendy Leece on the City Council, for God’s sake! In Newport Beach, the Old Guard, along with what will likely evolve into two new Old Guards — Mike Henn and incumbent Leslie Daigle — prevailed. Hopefully, Nancy Gardner, who bumped Dick Nichols, will move his seat in from the outer reaches of the council. Barbara Venezia came close enough to unseating Daigle to raise the obvious question: Would she have won had she not bailed out in a snit early in the campaign? Instead, we chalk up another one for the Dave Ellis school of politics.

Election Day, midnight: I finally threw it in when the Senate race was down to two states: Montana and Virginia. The Democrats had to win them both, and it was clear that a recount was going to be demanded in Virginia — and thus that it was too soon for me to lose any sleep over.

So I dragged into bed convinced we had saved the country from going over the brink by taking Congress from Bush’s pocket, but would have a couple of sticky years in Costa Mesa until Eric Bever came up for reelection and we could do this dance all over again. If I could have known before I went to sleep that Donald Rumsfeld would resign and the Democrats would prevail in Montana and thus needed only one more victory to control the Senate, I would surely have slept even better.

Now, if I can just find that UCI basketball schedule.