BOSTON -- On Tuesday, Massachusetts voters will go to the polls for a special Senate primary election to fill the seat vacated by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, who died on Aug. 25.

Actually, that part about “Massachusetts voters” is not entirely accurate.

In a record that was set on Nov. 4, 2008, just over 3 million Bay State voters went to the polls. Nonetheless, that meant that roughly half of the state’s population did not participate. (Nor did fully a million of the state’s 4.2 million registered voters.)

The part about the election being held on Tuesday, however, is entirely true.

So is the quandary I find myself in: I cannot recall an election where I felt such utter ambivalence about the candidates.

To be fair to all of them, following Ted Kennedy to the ballot cannot be easy.

Warts and all, Teddy K. was a larger-than-life character who had long ago evolved from simply being the surviving Kennedy brother and effective senator, to an outright institution in Massachusetts, no less iconic and seemingly permanent than Cape Cod or Fenway Park.

For most people in Massachusetts, voting every six years for Ted Kennedy was just something you dutifully did periodically, like buying a new car or renewing a passport.

So for many here, this is a new and strangely disorienting phenomenon, this auditioning of candidates to succeed “the senior Senator,” a title now held by Sen. John Kerry, but which for decades seemed like part of Kennedy’s baptismal name.

To be sure, if you are a Republican in Massachusetts, your choice in this primary election for the U.S. Senate seat is fairly clear: either State Sen. Scott Brown, or perennial (losing) candidate Jack E. Robinson, the Harold Stassen of Massachusetts, as my friend Rosemary refers to him.

(But then, if you are a Republican in Massachusetts, your political expectations tend to be clear to begin with -- low.)

For Massachusetts democrats, on the other hand, the field of candidates is at once competent and reasonable, but relentlessly uninspiring. (Hey, at least Jack E. Robinson contributed to arguably the most entertaining moment in Massachusetts political history -- getting into a fender-bender while phoning in live to a local radio talk show.)

State Attorney General Martha Coakley announced early (too early, in the opinion of some Kennedy family members), and has maintained her status as frontrunner. She has also held onto her image as a woman who apparently never met a joke she would laugh at, and for whom smiling seems to be a somewhat unnatural act.

My young kids watch a cartoon about a talking dog called “Martha Speaks.” A show about the current Senate candidate called, “Martha laughs” would be no less a flight of fiction.

Still, Coakley has been a solid prosecutor, is bright and principled, and would disappoint few if she were to go to Washington. And who wouldn’t want to see the state elect its first female U.S. Senator? (Okay, her opponents for starters.)

Michael Capuano has served six terms as a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts’ fabled 8th Congressional District, where his forbears were JFK and Tip O’Neil (not to mention Bobby Kennedy’s son, Joe). But Capuano typically looks more like he is still Mayor of Somerville (MA), having just come out of another aggravating and endless budget meeting. The word, “grouchy” comes frequently to mind in observing Capuano.

(JFK and Tip aside, Capuano might have done well to research another pillar from the Democratic pantheon -- former Vice-President Hubert Humphrey -- whose nickname was “The Happy Warrior.”)

Like Coakley, Capuano is smart, strong, and unapologetically liberal. In other words, Kennedy-like, if not actually Kennedyesque. If only he could glower less and laugh more. And like Ted, act like life can actually be fun.

City Year co-founder Alan Khazei is perhaps the most progressive of all the Senate candidates. (And easily the most good-natured.) But alas, even with the Boston Globe’s surprise endorsement , he’s also the least known. (Even also-ran candidate Stephen Pagliuca , millionaire and co-owner of the Boston Celtics, has more name recognition.) Make no mistake, Khazei is intelligent, articulate, and has a background of good work and impressive contribution. And he may well have a future in politics.

The problem for Khazei is that he has no past in politics. Which is rather a drawback, in replacing one of the nation’s most legendary politicians.

So there it is. The Democrat’s dilemma. How to somehow mix the best of three good, but-not-quite-good-enough candidates.

Which is why I will be writing in the name of “Marmikal Cocapazei,” my ideal, hybrid candidate. Sure, I know she/he can’t win. But then, I also know part of her/him will.