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What has candidly started to scare me, after a good # of years voting with the packet (and I assure you I _research_ far beyond what the packet contains) is the
by existencebox 7y ago
What has candidly started to scare me, after a good # of years voting with the packet (and I assure you I _research_ far beyond what the packet contains) is the fact that I'm often Still Clueless at the end.
A toy example is a recent tax levy for some hospital funding. While the packet contained some thousand-foot information on what it was for and amount/etc, there was NO breakdown as far as I could tell, even online, (certainly no objective/in depth/expert sourced) that actually tried to answer "what are the pros and cons? (this sometimes exists in the packet but often not for some of the more technical decisions) Is this a normal tax? Is the argument for or against disingenous? Are there better ways to source this revenue? Is there proper accountability and controls on utilization, and is the underlying legislation solid?
Take the following not as tooting my horn but to give a point of perspective: I have multiple degrees (including advanced) in applied math and CS, and spend an inordinate amount of my time reading about politics, law, and history. I still feel ill-equipped to vote on many of these topics. It sometimes amazes me that the system is as functional as it is now, if even a portion of decisions are made in this fashion.
- Analemma_ 7y agoThis is why local news is incredibly important, their job is to decipher this for you. For national things like Presidential elections, I couldn't care less who my local newspaper endorses, but for local elections I care quite a lot. If you're in the Seattle area, try to support the Seattle Times or the Stranger; they have different political leanings and you may like one and hate the other, but they both do good work in researching candidates and ballot issues before coming up with endorsements.
- egypturnash 7y agoWhen I lived in Seattle my voting process was basically "find the Stranger's recommendations, read through them, and very occasionally look deeper into one issue or office". This is definitely an important function of local news, they spend hours trying to make sense of this stuff and tease out hidden connections so you don't have to.
- legitster 7y agoDon't just look at the Stranger. They are fully capable of making some bad, bad recommendations, often for very petty reasons.
- egypturnash 7y agoI made my own petty decisions in voting, too.
- legitster 7y agoLevies I don't mind so much (fire departments says they need more money? Sure, why not.). But yeah, even with the packet, it's amazing how often I go down the list and don't really care about any of the options (Both of these candidates seem well qualified and capable of representing my district? Does political party even matter for school board? Should we even be electing a Sheriff?) Maybe it's actually a good thing? Our local elections do a good job of holding candidates accountable that they never err to far off the beaten path?
- Mirioron 7y agoI wonder if there's some kind of a wisdom-of-the-crowd effect going on. While votes are certainly undermined by political campaigns, I could see it still play an effect.