Posted on Sunday 5 November 2006
As we got our sample ballot in the mail this week, it strikes me that making informed decisions in the voting process is obscenely difficult. There’s just way to many candidates and questions that I don’t feel that I have sufficient information to make an informed decision. So, my question is: what recommendations do you have for making more informed voting decisions? In particular, how do you choose on local candidates, like city council, school boards, state senators, state representatives, and state officials? (Finding information about federal candidates and governors is easier)
The easiest thing to do is just pick which party you generally agree with the most and vote a straight ticket, but this doesn’t seem like a very good way to vote to me. I’d like to consider each candidate independently.
At a seminar one time, the speaker hypothesized that the reason voter turnout is so low in the US relative to other countries is the overwhelming amount of choices voters face. Rather than just going to vote for you Member of Parliament, you have to decide on everything down to county coroner. I kid you not…in the 2004 election we had to vote for the county coroner complete with their Republican and Democrat labels. What exactly the party labels mean in this circumstance I have no idea and even less of an idea why we have to vote on this position as opposed to, say, the city council appointed someone for the position.
This year, we have ballot questions like, do you vote to add the parcel of land at such and such intersection to Champaign city limits. I have no clue how to even decide on this. Then, there’s the bond levies for some fire department. Who wouldn’t want money for fire departments, but there must be a downside that I need to know to make an informed decision. And, then, there’s those silly Urbana-ites who got their ballot questions: (1) Should we bring the troops home from Iraq? and (2) Should we impeach Bush/Cheney?. We’re supposed to be voting…not taking non-binding opinion surveys on issues under a separate jurisdiction.
For ballot questions, I think I’ll just adopt the philosophy of voting NO by default unless I have an explicit reason to vote YES. The rationale being that YES votes generally cause action on the part of the government and limiting the actions of the government as much as possible (e.g., divided government) is generally a good thing IMHO.
Tags: News and Politics, voting
The sad part is that the place where your vote counts the most (local elections) is the place where it is hardest to discover the information. In reality, you can attend city council meetings to get up to date, but that’s too much of a waste of time.
I like the idea of voting “no” on everything because I don’t remember any changes that I was happy about (though certainly some that didn’t matter to me at all).
Yea, attending council meetings is just too much effort from me. I guess reading the local paper is another method…but even that is pretty time consuming to keep track of over a multi-year period.
You get the “Legalize Marijuana” question on your Colorado ballot…I’ve got to imagine that has spawned some pretty entertaining ads.
Local papers ususally have a good analysis of candidates and issues, but only 1 or 2 weeks before the election. This make it tougher for absentee votors to get informed. Rather than default to “no” I default to not voting at all for an issue or candidate if I am not informed. However, some issues which appear moral I may vote for the issue with less information. I find info about judges to be most difficult to obtain. Best way is to join a local party to increase your bond with the candidates. The way the Democrat (or should I say Complainocrat) party has been hijacked by lunatics like Pelosi, Reed, Kerry, Kennedy and similar ilk, I default to Republican or neutral. I sometimes vote against Democrats with little information about them. It wasn’t that way years ago, and I have voted for Democrats in the past. I could support Bayh of Indiana for instance.
ROMNEY/RICE IN 08 – YEAH.