I have a pretty traditional habit when it comes to voting. I always do it on Election Day.

I don’t early-vote partially because I’m philosophically opposed to doing so. Elections shouldn’t be a season, they should be a date certain on which decisions are made. There’s less fraud that way and it affords a maximum amount of information to the voting public to have all the campaigns present their arguments in full before the public gets to choose.

I act on that belief.

But I also vote on Election Day because I have a VERY 50-50 precinct, and when I go I can generally tell what the results are going to be by seeing who’s in line.

In any event, I like to do the Hayride’s vote recommendations on Election Day rather than earlier. If you voted early, you probably didn’t need our recommendations anyway.

But for those of you still looking for tips, here’s what we’ve got…

PRESIDENT: Vote Trump.

This one is obvious. Kamala Harris is an incompetent, grifting, radical DEI hire with no discernible leadership skills and in a sane world she wouldn’t crack 40 percent of the vote tonight.

Trump, meanwhile, is seeking to conclude the Hero’s Journey. He deserves your vote for literary reasons if nothing else.

1ST CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: Steve Scalise.

2ND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: Christy Lynch.

3RD CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: Clay Higgins.

4TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: Mike Johnson.

5TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: Julia Letlow.

6TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: Elbert Guillory.

Scalise, Higgins, Johnson and Letlow are shoo-ins and obvious calls, while Lynch, who has done the thankless work of running against Troy Carter in that New Orleans-based majority-black district, and Guillory, who’s up against Cleo Fields in the new affirmative-action district that replaced the one Garret Graves currently represents, are worthy of support for carrying the standard if nothing else.

There is a possibility that Guillory could force Fields into a runoff, given that three other Democrats are in the 6th District race. Should that happen things could be interesting in December.

But this has been the least-dramatic congressional cycle in a while in this state. Let’s hope Fields’ new district doesn’t determine who controls the House.

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT #1: Vote No.

Jeff Sadow’s recommendation was to vote yes on this amendment, which would dedicate all federal offshore energy royalties from “renewables” to coastal restoration. I disagree. I’m against dedicating revenues, period. Locking money up in these dedicated funds prevents the people’s representatives from making wise decisions, and in this case it institutionalizes one of the stupidest ideas imaginable – putting giant wind turbines in the path of hurricanes out in the Gulf.

If the feds want to subsidize that idiocy and they’re going to share royalties with the state, let the money go into the general fund. If the Legislature wants to appropriate it for coastal restoration, which is certainly a worthy cause, then so be it.

Judge, Court of Appeal — 1st Circuit, 2nd Dist., Subdist. 1, Div. C: Kelly Balfour

This is a Baton Rouge appellate judge race, and we don’t often make vote recommendations in judicial races for a number of reasons, but in this case it’s important. Balfour is a pretty standard-issue moderate Republican, and he’s running against Eboni Johnson Rose – who found herself kicked off the district court bench by the Louisiana Supreme Court for gross incompetence.

That’s right: the Supreme Court fired her as a district judge and she’s now running for a promotion. It’s one of the most amazing displays of chutzpah we’ve ever seen. And it’s a very bad idea to reward it. Balfour needs to win this one, big.

PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION, DISTRICT 2: Julie Quinn

This is a three-candidate race, and the other two are Jean-Paul Coussan, a Republican state representative from Lafayette, and Nick Laborde, a Democrat who’s never run for anything before that we know of. Laborde might pull enough votes to force a runoff and maybe even knock Coussan or Quinn out, though we wouldn’t bet on that.

Coussan isn’t a bad guy, but he’s being supported by a lot of the same people who backed Craig Greene, who currently holds this seat. And that means the “renewable energy” grifters who hang around the PSC trying to get free stuff off the backs of the ratepayers. Coussan says he’s opposed to the Green New Deal and we hope that’s true if he wins, but all politicians pay off their friends and between the solar people and the wind people he’s got some hangers-on we aren’t crazy about.

Quinn, who was known as a pretty conservative state senator when she served, is being accused of being owned by Entergy. Here’s the thing about that: Entergy’s electric power generation mix is very conventional, and it comes from very cheap sources. For a very long time Louisiana had the lowest electric rates in the country based on that. So if Quinn is in Entergy’s pocket and as a result our electric rates are the cheapest, because Entergy is burning natural gas to light up the state, it’s not a bad thing at all.

The PSC is generally pretty simple. You want people who will reject all of the grifters who show up promising “energy efficiency” and “clean power” and all the rest of the crap they want subsidies for that ratepayers will have to provide. Quinn, so far, seems like that candidate.

BATON ROUGE MAYOR-PRESIDENT: Sid Edwards

We’ve talked a good bit about this race, and it’s anybody’s guess how it’ll work out. The main question to be decided tonight is whether enough white Republican voters in St. George and southern Baton Rouge are willing to cross over and vote for Ted James in order to knock Edwards out of a runoff.

That shouldn’t happen, because as we’ve noted Ted James is a radical leftist who is playing a con on Republican voters that somehow he would offer a centrist mayoral administration. He’s found a few Republican stooges, like former state rep Scott McKnight and current state rep Paula Davis, to push this sucker play. With James you get, likely, 12 years of Hard Left governance in Baton Rouge; Sharon Broome, the incumbent, is termed out after only four.

Meanwhile, Edwards is the least political politician we’ve seen. He’s been attacked for not voting in recent elections, which…so what? Ted James is a better choice because he showed up to inflict Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and John Bel Edwards on us? What Edwards does bring to the table is a history of building winning organizations, which is a skill that does have some crossover from coaching football to running a city.

He’s worth a shot. At least with Edwards there is the possibility of something good. That absolutely does not exist with Broome or James.

OK, folks. That’s it. Now get out and vote today!