With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.
If you're a U.S. citizen with voting rights, your polling place can reportedly be located here.
If you're still researching issues, Ballotpedia is usually reasonably helpful.
Any other reasonably neutral election resources you'd like me to add to this notification, I'm happy to add.
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Notes -
How do you in-person voters... remember anything meaningful? Grew up in Oregon and opted for a mail-in ballot even here in conservative Utah purely for the convenience. I actually love being able to dedicate a little time one evening to reviewing the mailers I've set aside, the websites of a few candidates, and making sure I could remember the background behind things. Do you just quickly Google stuff? That sounds kind of dangerous as the #1 result isn't always a holistic or accurate portrayal.
Which (voting by mail) was almost incredibly useful this year. I don't know how much y'all may or may not have heard about this, but the Utah Legislature tried one of the most blatant and anti-democratic power grabs in memory, trying to give themselves power to effectively ignore or rewrite ballot measures even after they pass -- which isn't great IMO to start with, but the wording they put on the actual ballot measure/amendment to give themselves this power was an EGREGIOUS misstatement of the actual content of the measure (basically, a bald-faced lie). This happened with not one but TWO measures, both struck down by courts for being misleading to voters (though the second was less overt) -- but weirdly, this decision came too late to reprint the ballots, so votes on both will not be counted but will still appear. (Even worse, the whole thing wasn't prompted by anything understandable -- it was specifically because an anti-gerrymandering ballot measure passed that the legislature didn't like and got caught ignoring)
My point? Although the system worked in this case, if the courts hadn't managed to rule in time, or dropped the ball, a ton of voters right there in the booth may have been confused which one out of the four was the lie, which one was the exaggeration, which one was the one everyone likes, and which was the one that is probably useless (formalizing the election of county sheriffs, which... is already the case?)
But if you take home the ballot, and get to research as you vote, this becomes much, much easier. Professional politicians, hot take, take unfair advantage of voters, even well-informed ones, when voting in person. Vote by mail!
What is particularly difficult for you? I understand that perhaps your referendum are poorly (perhaps intentionally) worded, but what else is so hard? It is perfectly fine to simply not vote in races where you dont know or dont care enough to know. I know most of the judges, so I vote on judges. I care about schools and law enforcement so I take time to make my choice. I don't particularly know about water reclamation so I tend to abstain. Perfectly acceptable.
A typical ballot contains anywhere from 15 to 25 positions/questions, and anywhere from 20 to 40 candidates (not exact, totally spitballing based on previous experience). That's a lot of names. Hard to keep them all straight, yes?
Are you deliberately abstaining because you view yourself as not sufficiently educated, or are you not bothering because it's not practical to retain all of that information between when you roughly decide and the actual voting booth? I'd say the former is fine, even if I disagree, but the latter is exactly proving my point -- you could have contributed to the democratic process, but didn't, largely because you didn't have a paper ballot to consult at home with plenty of time to consider your options.
As an additional note, if ranked choice/IRV is implemented this becomes an extra important point -- because now you can potentially concern yourself with previously ignorable decisions.
Not really if I care about them.
We had 3 statewide advisory questions. Easy enough to remember. 1 State and 2 federal. A few LE-related questions. A school board choice. And about 30 judges to vote on, all that I remembered. There were also 2 local advisory questions, again easy to remember. The remainder were niche like water reclamation.
Whether I am deliberately abstaining, or not bothering is kind of subjective. My opinion is its not worth my time to educate myself about water reclamation not just because its so niche a subject, but also because I don't think any of the sources will be particularly trustworthy. If you wanted to, of course, for most of these niche questions you can vote party line and expect a pretty average result from whatever party you favor.
In any case, if you want to you can always get a sample ballot at home, fill it out and copy it at the booth.
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