I didn’t use to be politically engaged in a useful way; Trump changed that.
But as I fill out my ballot for local offices and issues, some of them nonpartisan, I realize that I’m making a lot of decisions based on vibes from the submitted statements in the voter’s manual. I don’t know much at all about incumbent actions, current controversies, or proposed solutions. I didn’t even visit campaign websites; I’m not sure how to research all the needed facts in a succinct and objective way.
I know that all this is to my discredit, but that’s how it is right now. So it occurred to me: given that state, am I doing more harm than good by voting at all? Am I doing the equivalent of flipping a coin, and should let the informed voters decide? It’s an odd feeling, and I’m kind of torn. I’ve always thought poorly of “low information voters,” and still think there’s no excuse in federal positions, but I can at least imagine exhaustion and intimidation reducing their motivation to look closer with all the local issues at stake (which are undeniably important, mind).
Thoughts?
(Also noting that despite my mention of Trump, I don’t want to focus on him like that automatic tag seems to imply.)
At least you’re reading the statements in the voter’s manual. For a lot of local candidates, particularly first-timers, information will be sparse. Fortunately, websites and Facebook pages are now cheap and easy, and many of the candidates will have some sort of online presence that goes into somewhat more depth, and maybe even let’ you email them with questions.
I’m lucky that my little suburb has one of what feels like the last community newspaper in America, and they cover school board and town council meetings year-round. Even so, for offices like the sewer board and the community college trustees, I’m just as likely to leave the ballot blank.
There isn’t a requirement that you vote on every single ballot item.
Even if you don’t indicate a preference on whether Willy Wagstaff should be re-elected to the Board of Supervisors or if speed bumps should be installed on Romper Room Drive, they’ll still count your votes on the big stuff.
Agree with @Kent_Clark. If you truly know nothing of the issue or the contending candidates, voting is a coin flip and you’d do as well to leave that item blank. But for many offices, you can with reasonable effort do at least some due diligence.
e.g. even if all you can do is a sanity check on each candidate, of 10 people running for school board you may be able to eliminate the 2 or 3 folks who’re running on a platform to ban all books except the Bible. By voting for any of the others, you’re offsetting the vote of some wacko who’s in favor of the book banners.
As you say, for state and federal offices there’s not much excuse for a responsible citizen to not have a good idea of who they want and to be able to articulate why.
What makes a vote underinformed? Or perhaps better, when do you know you are sufficiently informed to cast a vote on an issue or an elective office? There will always be people who know more than you do and maybe don’t vote, and people who know less than you do but still vote. Democracy is not a tidy exercise.
In my mind, and for myself, it depends on how much I care about the outcome. I always care about ballot measures, and always read at least the voters’ pamphlet, especially the paid arguments for and against, and who is making them. That’s actually relatively easy to do, because that information is there, served up to me on a platter. It’s the multiple candidates for minor offices that are difficult to parse. For some offices there are just the name, the occupation, and maybe a party affiliation (if the office allows that distinction). So sometimes I don’t vote on those, but if I vote I don’t mind that it’s on limited information because that’s what is available.
One thing I really love about Oregon’s vote-by-mail elections is how much time it gives me to fully research the candidates/measures I’m voting for or against.
No one can know everything and often, the goal of the proponents is to obscure the true intent of some legislation. In other words, they don’t make it easy.
My approach:
Using the voters’ pamphlet sent by the elections office ahead of the election, I first mark the votes I already know I’m going to make. That usually takes care of at least half.
For candidates and ballot measures, I read the statements for and against, and as @Roderick_Femm points out, who is making each argument. If a candidate/ballot measure is supported by organizations I support and respect, that will usually sway my vote. I also research every candidate online to the greatest extent possible. Sometimes friends whose views I respect have persuasive input, too.
Whether a candidate is a Democrat weighs heavily in their favor for me. When there is more than one Dem competing for a position, it can get more complicated.
The ones I have the hardest time with are the “non-partisan” positions like judges. Where I used to live, I was intimately knowledgeable about people vying for those posts and felt my vote was an informed one. Where I live now, I’m not dialed in to the legal community and it’s a lot harder. I still research as much as I can.
One of the more useful pieces of information usually (not always, but frequently) included in each candidate’s statement in the voters’ guide is the endorsements section. It’s usually at the end, sometimes in smaller type or italics or something, a block paragraph of names and organizations. It’s easy to overlook and ignore because of the formatting, and besides, if you’re not a political junkie, a lot of the names won’t mean anything.
Read them anyway. Sometimes you’ll notice something obvious — like, for me, any candidate who gets an endorsement from the local police unions is an automatic reject, and I lean toward the opponent. Also, by reading closely, you can get hints about mystery candidates based on commonalities between endorsement groups. You see Candidate A is endorsed by Group X, and you know Candidate A is an asshole. Then you look down to Candidate B; you don’t have a handle on them, but you see they’re also endorsed by Group X. This tells you something.
In general, responding to the broad original question: I assume the majority of voters are underinformed. The people who actually pay attention to issues and do the homework and vote intelligently are in the minority. There are lots and lots of Dunning-Kruger voters who don’t know shit and vote anyway because they’re angry or malicious or spiteful. If you simply don’t vote because you’re nervous about not knowing anything, the asshole votes will outnumber you. I’d rather that underinformed voters who mean well go ahead and participate, because it dilutes the impact of the shithead vote.
I had a situation like this when I voted this year. There were four candidates running for three seats on the school board and none of them are campaigning in any way, at least not that leaves a trace on the Internet. There’s not so much as a Facebook page for any of them. I voted for the incumbents on the grounds that if any of them were outright nutjobs, it would have made waves in the last few years.
Mind you, this is the first contested local election I’ve had in quite a while. Maybe a decade? I guess I shouldn’t complain.
I have always waggishly stated that even the idiots among us deserve representation. (I know, I’ve seen how that can turn out!)
At some level, it feels like the lack of information is by design. When voting for Assistant Dog Census Justice, do we even know what they do? It is frankly nonsense that so many of these jobs are filled by election.
At another level, the average informed voter would have a hard time describing what the different tiers of elected officials are actually responsible for and how they impact our lives. Is issue A the responsibility of the City or the County? The Country or the State? The State or the Federal Government? Is that a Planning Board issue, or a School Board issue? And on and on.
Thankfully, there are party affiliations and endorsements to use as shorthand.
My strategy, like others have stated, is to do the best that I can with limited input, and try to prevent political opponents from getting elected.
For example, in today’s election for Town Commissioners, is a candidate that seemed attractive in their campaign statements. But digging into their background and endorsements it really looked like they are running to get a foot in the door and a line on their resume for higher office. Not automatically a bad thing, but they are in the wrong party, so I’ll ignore their campaign happy talk and vote for someone else acceptable, in order to slow them down.
Yes, this is often the most useful thing on the candidate’s website. Their policy statements and such are usually generic platitudes that everyone will agree with, “our schools should make sure every child reaches their full potential”, etc., which do not help distinguish them from their competitors at all.
One of the school board candidates running here was endorsed by several dentists. To me that is neither good nor bad, just a bit confusing.
We vote for everyone around here except dog catcher, & I think that’s only because we don’t have a dog catcher. Seriously, we vote for all of the row offices; is there really a Republican or Democrat way to record deeds, register wills, clerk the courts, etc?
We also vote for all of our judges, from state supreme court down to the local magistrates, who handles things like summary offenses / moving violations & small claims court, in other words, probably nothing that is precedent setting & everything is appealable. Judges aren’t supposed to publicly take positions so that they remain impartial for potential cases they might here. That means you can’t find out that much about them
Sorry, but a candidate’s own website is not impartial & unbiased. If I waste take the time to look at their website & come across with anything but a glowing review of them I’ve voting against them because they are a dumbass!
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My problem today is one of the races that they’re both dirtbags. Help me dopers with who/what I should write in:
Same for here in Colorado. Being able to vote from my desk, while looking up various candidates, including their social media posts, their endorsements, and a solid googling lets me rule out a lot of people who seem fine going by their blurbs. Or on ballot initiatives, see the tiny little gotchas buried in reams of text.
But underinformed is in no way worse than no vote. No one is perfect, and it’s better to make an educated guess than abandon any responsibility. I just wish that other states made it easier to vote easily with all the time needed from the security of home.
I didn’t mean to imply that a candidate’s own resources are impartial and unbiased, but if you’re looking for information about a school board candidate whose website has terms like “parental control” and “age-appropriate library materials” it’s pretty easy to unlock their code.
Fair 'nuf. However, somehow this state lets school board & town commissioner cross file so they’re listed as “Democratic/Republican” &, this year, there was exactly the # of people on the ballot that you could vote for, which means they’re all going to win. I had a total of 4 votes on my ballot that had the same # of people voting as would be elected.
I don’t have any idea what the current issues are with my local school board and do not vote for them. Maybe if they campaigned actively I would. And I say this as someone who, 40 years ago, was a member of the board. A non-voting parent rep (one of two; I represented elementary school parents), but otherwise a full member. I once moderated Q&A session at the local town hall between two candidates and they aired their views, but these things don’t happen nowadays.
So my reaction to the OP, is that if you are underinformed, don’t vote.
I got a couple of flyers from one of them, and a flyer from one of the local liberal groups endorsing a slate of them (which included the one whom I got a flyer directly from). I also saw a few yard signs. And I ran into a City Council member at a farmer’s market who mentioned support of a few of them (also including the one I got a flyer from).
I didn’t vote for exactly that slate: One of the ones not on that slate was an incumbent, and I’m fairly satisfied (and relatively well-informed) about how the local schools are doing. So I voted for her, too.
I understand that the OP is interested in informed voting as opposed to uninformed. However, as someone who has been involved in several local campaigns over the years, VOTE! Even if uniformed, vote. The fact that someone votes is a public record. There are 3 types of voters: voters who might be supportive, voters who might vote against the issue/candidate, and the irrelevant. If you don’t vote you don’t matter. No public official will care a wit about what you think or say. And whether you voted is the first thing any candidate documents.
If there is a race you really don’t want to vote on, I can’t imagine why, then skip it on the ballot. But make sure the record shows you voted. The political system is watching.