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Six days ago a fairly significant political upset occurred during a special Senate election in the state of Massachusetts. A Republican won the Senate seat previously occupied for 47 years by Sen. Ted Kennedy. The outcome of this election has stirred up a tidal wave of political analysis that threatens to drown us all in its punditry, and frankly, I’ve just been waiting for the dust to settle before weighing in.

Well, that was a waste of six days. As it turns out, there is no definitive answer as to why Republican Scott Brown won, what his win means, or what message the voters were trying to send to Washington. Did Scott brown win because he put his exact views on the table and let you know who he was, or did he win because of who he wasn’t? Did his opponent Martha Coakley lose because she ran a poor campaign, because she took the Democratic voter support for granted, or because an unlikely grassroots effort overwhelmed her (or all of the above)? Does Scott Brown’s win mean health care reform is dead, or does it just need to be different? Will this new senator and his overthrow of the 60 vote majority cause more bipartisan cooperation in Washington or will it further harden the Democrats to get done whatever they can before the 2010 midterm elections? Were the voters of Massachusetts trying to send a message that they’re unhappy with health care reform, Government bailouts for large corporations, Constitutional rights for terrorists and perceived tax hikes, or were they upset that the Democratic majority couldn’t get items from their progressive agenda passed with any haste (or at all)?

As it turns out, you don’t have to go far to find an equal number of people that will come down on either side of those and many other questions surrounding the election of Scott Brown. So I’ve decided to tell you what I do know for sure, and I think it’s every bit as important. As anyone who regularly reads my columns knows, I believe that the right to vote is probably the most sacred right we possess, and that being said, I saw many encouraging things in last Tuesday’s election in Massachusetts. First off, the voter turnout was quite high by any standard, but it was even more impressive when considering that it was a special election with only one item on the ballot, and the weather around the state was cold, snowy and wet (which can often keep people from the polls)(read more about the voter turnout here in an article by the NY Daily News). High voter turnout is always a good thing, because it means people are getting involved, and regardless of the outcome, people have made a personal investment in the direction of the country.

The number of voters who turned out is only a fraction of the reason the voters of Massachusetts deserve a Roar of Approval. The larger reason is how they voted. For anyone who doesn’t reside in Massachusetts let me tell you that getting a competitive political race is no small task. It is a state that has three registered Democrats for every registered Republican, a state where 85% of the state legislature are Democrats, a state where all 10 members of the U.S. House of Representatives are Democrats, and a state that hasn’t had a Republican U.S. Senator since 1979, and where the senate seat won by Scott Brown has be a Democrat since 1952. Taking these facts into account it’s very easy to see why this election was considered such an upset, but more than an upset it was revelatory moment. We saw that the voters aren’t stupid and they aren’t sheep. When a combination of factors that people care about converge, like a poor economy, high unemployment, health care, terrorism, and taxes, people are willing to think and vote with an independent mind. Even I am guilty of not giving the voters enough credit, accusing them (during calmer times) of just going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for either a D or an R, depending on political persuasion, without knowing all that much about the candidates, or worse, not voting at all. My previous criticism of voters may have been fair or unfair, but it clearly was not the case in Massachusetts this time around, as they went against their own political stripe in these uncertain times, and came out in droves.

In my ideal world no political parties would exist, and each candidate would have to tell you what they stand for, and what direction they think the country should go, and the voters would have to pay close attention to elections to know who to vote for, not being able to rely on traditional party affiliation. That will probably never happen, but I feel that the election in Massachusetts is probably as close as we will get, where voters looked hard at the candidates and put party politics aside, voting independently and presumably for who they thought would be the best advocate for them. I can’t lie, I never thought I’d say that about Massachusetts, and to steal a line from all those political talking heads, “If it can happen in Massachusetts it can happen anywhere”…and I hope it does.