re: Voting: Am I a completely uninformed idiot? Are most people?

quote:

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This is how you do it:

1 - get a sample ballot online
2 - study everything on it
3 - make informed decisions
4 - go vote

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I mean, this is what I was doing. But ultimately, you aren't going to read a quick blurb about a real issue and suddenly become informed enough to truly understand the issue.

There are some local township elections. I know a little about the people currently on the board. I know some of them are apparently dip shits. Yet I really have no info whatsoever on the person running against them. I'm not going to find any real meaningful information on them since they have no political history. So do I just guess that they'd be okay since the other person is a dip shite? Obviously no, but I feel like the ballot is filled with this crap.

Tax measures for a place I just moved are another big one. I'm not completely against local taxes as these are the ones that I actually see getting used to benefit me. But the reality of how the tax will actually get used, the alternative options, the repercussions of doing/not doing it are. I can find a "layman's" definition of the bill, but I'm not that tied into local government to truly understand the outcomes.

In a national election, when dealing with macro economic decisions, I have a personal philosophy that steers my decisions. Locally, you need to be more tied into the micro economic impacts to understand what you are voting for. Some issues I'm aware of the effects (major highway projects, incorporation of our town, etc), but there are many that I just don't have an opinion on. I feel bad about that in a way, but I don't lose sleep over it. This thread was more about realizing that I'm not that well informed, but at least I looked it up. I can't imagine how many people just go press buttons.