A number of posters there (myself included) commented on how lazy & civically irresponsible it is to just vote a party-line ballot without researching the people and measures in depth. But this isn’t always easy, especially for the supposedly “non-partisan” offices (but who are we kidding).
How do (or could) you actually get more information for these “dark” candidates and measures?
Who is endorsing this candidate or measure, both locally and nationally?
Who is donating money to them or funding them, either directly or through traditional “dark money” sources?
Did they say anything in local forums, and were they recorded as podcasts or YouTubes?
But these are flawed methods, usually relying on secondhand sources or limited and purposefully obfuscated primary sources when it comes to things like campaign financing.
There’s just a lot of astroturfed candidates and measures out there, varying levels of corruption, good-old-boy clubs, etc., especially in small communities where the same people (or dynasties) run in local elections mostly uncontested and without any sort of public presence at all.
I don’t think this is how democracy should work. How are you supposed to vote on people and ideas that have no useful information attached to them at all?
What would you do? What better ways of getting more information are there?
It’s not too hard to find sites like Ballotpedia, where all of the candidates have a paragraph to tell about themselves and their positions. And I’ve found that for most races, even a quick glance over those is enough: For instance, if one candidate didn’t even fill out the Ballotpedia paragraph (and then how diligent will they be about doing their actual job, if elected?), or if they state that their number 1 priority is things that I find abhorrent.
For school board specifically, I generally look for who the teacher’s union is endorsing. Although for the last couple of cycles, I haven’t been able to find that.
EDIT: I also see that you mentioned ballot initiatives in your OP. Unless it’s something that I’m already clear on (yes, I will be voting for the levy for the public library), I try to read the full text of those, not just the ballot language. Last cycle, there were some measures where the ballot language (written by the Republican secretary of state) was just outright lying about what the measure did.
I think that’s only the case in big races in major metros, maybe? In many of the rural places I’ve lived, many candidates and measures were altogether either completely missing from Ballotpedia or else only had auto-generated information, like a name and a party affiliation and nothing else.
We may be even lazier–if you’re down-ballot and we can’t find much about you, we vote you out. Lots of our ballots have language like “Retain such-n-such in office”, yes or no. For our early voting a few days ago, we voted no on three of the five because we didn’t really know who they were and couldn’t find out much about them.
The other two, we also voted no on, but we knew who they were.
For me, it’s judges. There must be 20 of them on the ballot this time. I have no idea who they are or what they’ve done, so I don’t vote them up or down.
As you say, if they couldn’t be bothered to fill out the form—given that Ballotpedia is a fairly well-known site of good reputation—that does say something negative about them. As does any language indicating far-right positions. (For me, obviously—it might be catnip to other users of Ballotpedia.)
For years I relied on the League of Women Voters’ site; it now seems more hit-or-miss. But that might not stay the case over time.
Since I became a Czech citizen in 2018, I have voted in five elections. The last one was just the other week and it was the first time I voted in a municipal election here. Specifically, this election covered municipal elections (in Prague that means both for the city council and for district [borough] councils) and senatorial midterms.
I already know a lot of about my local senator and voted for him for the second time (he won). But I was clueless about municipal elections, who would be standing as candidates, and what issues they entail. In all my time in the Czech Republic, local government was something of an uncharted water for me. Unlike Canada (well, certainly unlike Toronto), municipal councils are run on party lines and the Mayor is elected by the city council, not by popular vote.
Being as I am someone who believes strongly in civic rights and responsibilities, I decided to remedy that this time. I discussed municipal issues with various people and then used a website called a voting calculator, where you answer your opinions on various issues and it gives you a ranking of which parties most represent your views. I used this to help me select the party I would be voting for for the city council and I circled a candidate from a list of available ones who I was vaguely familiar with. For the Prague 5 district council, I voted for a party that seems to be involved in keeping the local nature in good condition and after looking at the candidates they are fielding on their website, selected one from my neighborhood.
For measures/candidates that are (meant to be) partisan, I vote D across the board. For things like referendums I’ll check the local ACLU or other similar websites that explain exactly what a yes/no vote means and what the ramifications of it are, and usually go with their suggestions. Now, for non-partisan candidates (judges/school board etc), this is the only time I pay attention to yard signs. Specifically someone that lives down at the end of my block. I figure, based on the pride flags on their house and pride stickers on their car, whoever they’re backing is probably the right (well, Left) person.