Cascadia had a gubernatorial election this year and I think that I was conned.

The election was slated to be pretty close. The Governor had only barely won the last one and despite the leftward tilt of the state as a whole, the sour feelings over her first election and only modest popularity suggested that the Republican challenger might have a shot.

I’ve been commuting for over three months now. I don’t have many nice things to say about Cascadia’s transportation system, but one of the really nice things are the signs over the Interstate informing me how long it’s going to take to get to New City, near where I work. Not only is it good to know how patient I’m going to need to be, what the sign tells me tells me whether I should go straight through New City by way of the Splinterstate or go through Zaulem to New City on to Mindstorm HQ. It was really, really nice to have that kind of information on the road. I don’t think that there were any days that it wasn’t up there.

Until the day after the election. Since then, the signs were only on one day and on two other days only one of the three signs I usually see was lit. Oh, and this morning it was wrong by a factor of three, suggesting a shockingly short day when in actuality it was one of my longest commutes to date. I didn’t even get any notice on the way home the other day that they were cutting the Splinterstate down to one lane for construction. Would have been helpful to know!

So I smell a conspiracy. The Governor needed state government to appear to be working while The Governor was angling for re-election. Now that that’s happened, the state says “screw it” and saves on whatever the lighting and monitoring cost.

Part of me now wishes that The Governor had been unseated, the worm. Then again, if this is what happens when they were re-elected, one can only imagine the havoc that would be wreaked if it had gone the other way!