Why bother to vote? (Not what you think.)

Politics & Elections
1

We just got our ballots for the local election in our little town on the North Shore of Boston. Eight positions (e.g., selectman, town clerk, assessor, public library trustee, school committee, etc.), and in every case, only one person is running; in a couple no one is, there are empty write-in slots.

So what would you do? Marking and sending in a ballot will obviously have no effect on the outcome. What’s the point?

Over my nearly 70 years, I’ve often thought that we in the U. S. are too wedded to the concept of democracy and feel we must have elections when they aren’t really necessary. How many committees have you known about where only the number of people needed actually ran, or maybe even not enough, and even though there was an election, no one lost? Why not just let the people who want to be on the committee be on it? Why the farce of an “election”?

I used to think that way, and perhaps 40 or 50 years ago it would have worked out just fine, and maybe even now in many, even most, circumstances it still does.

But in the last few decades, and especially since the rise of Trump, the value and importance of democracy has never been clearer. So I’ve realized that even at the cost of occasional elections with no competition, maintaining the habits and practices of democracy is essential to protecting democracy in the long term. If all of a sudden we have a town selectman showing signs of being a mini-Trump or mini-Berlusconi or mini-Erdogan, we’ll need an election to oust him or her.

Even absent such a drastic situation, it’s good to signify to the community, to the current actual candidates, to potential future candidates, and even to oneself, that the democratic process is in place, is valued, and works.

It’s also important for individuals to get into and maintain the habit of voting in all elections. With the exception of one or two primaries, I have voted in every national and local election since 1976.

So naturally, I took about three minutes to fill out the ballots for my wife, my MIL, and myself, stick them in their envelopes, and put them in the mailbox.

I didn’t expect to write a mini-essay on the importance of democracy when I sat down to write this OP. I thought just I’d ask fellow Dopers whether they bother to vote when there’s no competition. So feel free to answer that question, or offer your views on democracy, or agree or disagree with what I’ve said.

2

I vote because I always vote. It doesn’t really matter who is running.

3

I haven’t actually seen a ballot with no offices contested; but I do very often see ballots in which some of the offices aren’t contested.

I’m going to vote in the contested races anyway. For the uncontested ones on the ballot, I do one of several things: vote for the candidate if I think they’re doing or will do a good job; write somebody in if I think the candidate’s doing/will do a terrible job or is in general a terrible person; or sometimes skip the uncontested race altogether if I think they’re meh or I can’t find out anything about them (beyond their name and how many kids they’ve got, which for some reason seems to be the one piece of information always given.)

In the case of your entirely-uncontested ballot, I think I’d do that; going to some lengths if necessary to find at least one person on the ballot who I had an opinion about.

(If you’re in any position to do so – consider running for local office? There aren’t going to be any choices if nobody’s willing to run.)

4

Like thorny_locust, sometimes I vote for an uncontested candidate, and sometimes I don’t.

From the OP:

The empty write-in slots are an actual issue. If no one enters a write-in vote, the empty office will probably be handled by the selectmen without harm done. But there’s potential for someone totally unqualified winning with one or two write-in votes.

If the library trustee post had no one running, I would ask a librarian, who I’ve talked with before, if there was any discussion going on about it, and whether the other library staff were writing in someone in particular. If it was another post with no one running, I might ignore it, but that’s not ideal.

5

I tend to skip the uncontested ones that I know nothing about, especially if they’re ‘non political’. If for no other reason, because I don’t feel like figuring out where the, for example, comptroller stands WRT something or another. If they’re running uncontested, I’ll most likely skip it unless I have some prior knowledge about it for one reason or another.

The non-political ones are even more difficult since the vague/meaningless statements don’t tell you anything at all. Both sides will say pretty much the same thing “I enjoy engaging with the community and I want to listen to the people and I’ll always do what I feel is best”. Thanks, helpful.
However, when it comes to the local school board, I’ll usually scroll through their facebook posts and see what I can find. In the last election, one of the candidates, on their personal facebook page, like a year earlier, made a MAGA or Trump reference or something. So that’s a no for him. It’s also a no for one of the other candidates that he endorsed. And, conveniently, someone on my block had yard signs for the other two candidates and also has a bunch of Pride bumper stickers on their car, so I’ll trust that those are the people I should vote for.*

Having said that, if it’s someone that you want in that position, a reason to vote could be to make sure the ‘other side’ can’t get enough people together to win with a write-in candidate.

*The candidate I didn’t vote for got into some hot water when, he said about the election: “just as the Americans during World War II had to fight two adversaries on two different fronts, the Germans and the Japanese, I will be fighting on two fronts as well with the School Board election”

He ‘apologized’ (“to anyone that misunderstood”) because he totally wasn’t meaning to imply the other candidates are like Nazi Germany and Japan. When I heard that, I kept thinking that, even if we take this at face value, he’s forgetting that this is a little tiny school board election, not a World War.

6

I don’t usually bother with the uncontested elections, but I’ve never seen a ballot where everything was uncontested. I think that it’s just a quirk of our system: You can’t just make it “everyone who wants to be a committee member can be”, because sometimes there will be more people who want in than there’s room for. And which offices are uncontested won’t always be the same from year to year. So you set all of them up as elections, and when the election system fails, it automatically falls back on something that still makes sense. Whereas if you tried to use some other system instead of elections, it might fail in a messy way. What’s the downside to having elections? If you have any contested races or issues at all, you need a ballot anyway, and it usually doesn’t cost anything extra to put more things on the same ballot. At worst, you might end up with a two-page ballot occasionally, that could have fit on one page if you left off the uncontesteds.

7

In the county I reside in, write-in candidates are supposed to file a notarized “Declaration of Intent to be a Write-In Candidate” at least 61 days before the election.

A couple of elections ago the election judges were asked to count the write-in votes. (This was not part of our duties in the last election.) I don’t really remember but I think we were given a list of write-in candidates to provide totals. I don’t recall what happened to write-in tallies for those not on the list (it seems someone always votes for Mickey Mouse), but there may have been an “Other” category for them.

I don’t know what would happen if someone who hadn’t filed a declaration got enough votes to win. I would hope those votes would be counted, but I’m not sure. It’s possible that writing-in the name of a candidate who hasn’t filed to be a write-in is the same as leaving it blank.

8

Good point. So for an empty slot, one should either not vote, or write in somebody who is qualified and willing to take the position.

(There is, unfortunately, potential for someone totally unqualified winning even if there are two or more candidates on the ballot for one position in an entirely usual fashion. But I agree that a random write-in for a position with nobody running is a bad idea – though it might at least get somebody to run the next time around.)

Yeah. That sort of combative attitude is pretty much what you don’t want on the school board. (Possible exception if the other members of the school board have genuinely been doing terrible things. But they’d have to be pretty terrible.)

9

Uh, what now???

10

Yeah, wait a minute. In that long OP I missed this. @commasense, why are you filling out other people’s ballots for them?

11

When you’re a MAGAt, school boards are the second most important election after President. School boards are where the future of America is turned transsexual / woke, or is left as Jeebus intended: all white, all hetero, all male-in-charge, and thoroughly hate-fueled.

There is totally a World(view) War being waged in schools and they are the Nazis in that war.

12

With their knowledge and approval, of course. What do you think I am, a Republican? :grin:

13

In my rural neighborhood, only a handful of votes can decide an election. In recent memory, there was at least one that resulted in a tie, and was settled by a coin toss.

In another local case, a young candidate, running for town chairman, apparently got under the skin of a neighbor. Of an older generation, probably pissed at the young punk kid running, he started making phone calls on the Sunday before the election. He and his wife called everybody they knew in the town and urged them to write in his name on the ballot.

On Tuesday, he won.

14

Can this non-American ask a question? What’s a selectman and an assessor? And how is it decided which positions are elected versus appointed? You do seem to have an awful lot of elections… I have no idea of that’s good or bad.

15

I’ve wondered that myself. Plus some positions are appointed in some jurisdictions and elected in others. It does make for a lot of races and looking at a ballot and seeing elections for people (or positions) you’ve never even heard of, much less have any idea how you should vote on, can be overwhelming. But on the other hand, having less appointed positions means it’s less likely for an elected official to be able to fill city hall with their own people.

For example, the Register of Deeds seems like a pretty straight forward job:

The following documents and services are available through the Register of Deeds:

Certified copies of birth, death and marriage records
Request to file a military discharge for safe keeping

In addition, the Office of the Register of Deeds records, scans and compiles an index of real estate documents, corporation papers and military discharges; records informal probate instruments; files and keeps an index of financing statements; collects the real estate transfer tax; and performs such other functions as provided, pursuant to Sections 59.51, 69.23 and other pertinent sections of the Wisconsin Statutes.

No opinions necessary, not a lot of room for a political agenda to have any effect, so why do we elect them? What is one person going to do differently than the next. In fact, I’d go so far as to say this would be someone that can just get hired like any other city employee. Best as I can tell it’s a historical holdover from aspects of the job weren’t quite as straightforward and sometimes their ‘best judgement’ was required.

Similarly, and I believe this is different in different states (maybe even within the same state?), in my area, [city] police chiefs are appointed, [county] sheriffs are elected.

16

I look at voting as exercising a muscle that needs periodic toning. If you start ignoring it, it gets weak and flabby. Not a great analogy, but it works for me.

17

I always vote and always will. The way I handle uncontested positions is simple because I’m on a seek-and-destroy mission, the object of which is to slaughter Republican candidates for any and every office on the ballot. If the uncontested candidate has a “D” by his name, I vote for him but, if he has an “R” by his name I do not vote for that position.

18

I would always turn out to vote, but I live in a jurisdiction where a lot of the kind of jobs mentioned are appointed, either (depending on the job) as professional civil servants, or by the elected local authority, to whom our votes in effect delegate that power.

19

For uncontested positions, is there an option to vote to object to the candidate? Otherwise it feels rather Putinesque.

20

It’s not like interested parties were prevented from running. It’s just that many of these local political positions suck eggs. They aren’t a career, you won’t get rich, or powerful, you just have responsibilities and angry locals sending you email.