Voting Information

[Reeve]

So I voted in the Texas Democratic Primary today. After the Presidential bit, which it's easy to be informed about, I came to the rest of the candidates, and discovered that I knew absolutely nothing about any of these 60 or so people trying out for the 30 or so jobs.

So I'm wondering if maybe, since we have these newfangled digital voting machines, we could have the ability to have a "More Info" section next to the name of the person so that you could see a short blurb written by the candidate on what their positions are in order to make a more informed choice. As it was, I really only had the names of the candidates to go by, which I'm sure for many people opens it up to a lot of perceived racial bias, even unintentionally. If I could know a bit more about the candidates, I could make an informed choice.

I've tried educating myself before going to the polls before, but it turns out that many of the smaller candidates don't even have a web page, probably knowing that 99.99% of voters will never even look for it.

In addition to that, all of the "referendums" on the ballot were incredibly vague, many of them being no better than asking, "Do you want to make the country better? Yes/No." If I had a "more info" button, maybe that referendum could give me a few more specifics about their intentions. Some numbers to go along with the question.

Here's an example referendum from today's ballot:

Should the Texas Legislature and the United States Congress pass criminal justice reform legislation that ensures equal justice throughout our society without respect to race, socioeconomic status, geographic location, or other factors unrelated to behavior, ensuring as well common sense policies to protect the rights of law enforcement officers, the community, and defendants in the criminal justice system?

That's super vague. How are they planning to improve justice system equality? Eliminating mandatory minimums? Decriminalization of crimes that target certain ethnic groups more than others? What's the plan? How much will it cost? How much could we save? Which "common sense policies" are they talking about?

Maybe for each referendum/proposition/initiative, you have in the "more info" section, a quick summary that looks like this:

Action to be taken: Eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing in State and County criminal cases.
Budget Impact: Estimated to save $300 million per year in reduced prison costs
Argument For: (Blurb from proponent group)
Argument Against: (blurb from detractors)

This might mean that you'd need more voting machines, since voters would spend more time at the voting booths, but I think it might be worth it in order to give voters SOME chance to understand what they're voting on. What does everyone think?

[Kujako]

Don't they send you a little booklet with information about the various candidates?

[Gamdwelf]

My state has more information next to the bigger name people on the ballot.

[Beazy]

I personally asked the Dallas City Council if they wanted me to build an application that would allow voters to chose a candidate and display youtube videos about the candidates. They told me no and that it was a horrible idea. . . I thought it was a great idea. . . I even said I would develop the application for free. One guy shouted me down and said Youtube is a liberal agenda website and that could hurt republican candidates. I was like WTF, wutevs` then.

[Stormdash]

Referendum language ends up very soupy because it's hotly argued and even litigated by advocates for and against before it ever appears on a ballot. Each side basically wants the "vote for/against or Domo-Kun eats a kitten" language on the ballot form, and the nitpicking comes down to word choice and syntax and the result is... a mostly unreadable hot mess unless you are an attorney and/or really good at logic puzzles and got a 4 or higher on AP English.

EDIT: And also understand, every place, every single source, for more information about any particular ballot measure, is written by someone with an opinion about it. Don't ever just blanketly assume you have a handle on it from votesmart alone or anywhere else.

[Gheld]

And how do you think your average career politician will react to the idea of having more easily informed voters?

[Reeve]

My state has more information next to the bigger name people on the ballot.

I care more about the smaller name people. I can learn about the bigger name people myself.

[Reeve]

http://votesmart.org/

This site seems like a decent resource. It really doesn't address your request, but it's probably more useful than a blurb anyway.

Also, unless they just changed them, we still use the cards where I vote. :/

The site isn't exactly easily laid out like the sample ballot. You have to individually search each candidate.

So I tried that on one of the smaller players that were on the ballot, chosen at random. The only information they had about her was her email address, and which universities she attended. Nothing else.

If you gave people the option to put a blurb about themselves on the ballot itself, by contrast, I think virtually everyone would do it.

[negawonka]

My state now requires paper ballots, so no more electronic aides in voting.

Your best bet is to try and research matters ahead of time and failing that pick a party and when in doubt vote for that party. The worst is local elections, because the candidates often have no party or any website so you have no reliable way to be informed about them.

[Shinra1]

But that defeats the whole purpose of voting. Surely if you need cues to help you vote at the last minute then you shouldn't be voting at all. I think a lot more things would be done if MORE people abstained from voting. Furthermore you just reinforce the notion that most people don't know what's good for them.

[Stormdash]

But that defeats the whole purpose of voting. Surely if you need cues to help you vote at the last minute then you shouldn't be voting at all. I think a lot more things would be done if MORE people abstained from voting. Furthermore you just reinforce the notion that most people don't know what's good for them.

Amen to this, but good luck pointing out that there's something troubling about people being brought to polling locations with nothing but an instruction sheet with candidates pre-selected.

[Reeve]

Oh, right. I temporarily forgot local politicians exist. I've only ever used it to look up people going for state or federal office.

Right, state and federal people are easy. I can learn about them on my own. It's local sheriffs and local judges and railroad commissioners and shit like that which is difficult to learn about beforehand, and those people are like 80% of the ballot.

- - - Updated - - -

My state now requires paper ballots, so no more electronic aides in voting.

Your best bet is to try and research matters ahead of time and failing that pick a party and when in doubt vote for that party. The worst is local elections, because the candidates often have no party or any website so you have no reliable way to be informed about them.

The Texas Electronic Ballots won't even tell you what party the candidates are. You only get their name.

- - - Updated - - -

But that defeats the whole purpose of voting. Surely if you need cues to help you vote at the last minute then you shouldn't be voting at all. I think a lot more things would be done if MORE people abstained from voting. Furthermore you just reinforce the notion that most people don't know what's good for them.

I do try to learn as much as possible ahead of voting. But a lot of these people aren't easy to learn about. Tell me everything you know about Jack Boatner's plans for the Harris Precinct 1 Constable position.

Having a place that all the candidates can give information where they know all voters will have access to it is valuable.

- - - Updated - - -

Don't they send you a little booklet with information about the various candidates?

No. They did this for us when I lived in California, but not where I live in Texas.

[Beazy]

No. They did this for us when I lived in California, but not where I live in Texas.

They don't give out info here in the DFW area either. It just says "District Ct Judge: " and lists like 10 names, with no data. I dont even know if some of these people are dems or repubs. Its a pain in the ass to look up each person on your phone while standing in line.

[Independent voter]

Just do what everyone else does, vote for the one or two candidates you know, vote on the one or two initiatives you know, vote "no" on the rest of the initiatives and either pick all the incumbents or vote your party line.

Really though, it's not the president who gets the pothole you drive over every day fixed, it's not the president who yells at the police for being too heavy handed, it's your city council member or mayor.

[Reeve]

Just do what everyone else does, vote for the one or two candidates you know, vote on the one or two initiatives you know, vote "no" on the rest of the initiatives and either pick all the incumbents or vote your party line.

Really though, it's not the president who gets the pothole you drive over every day fixed, it's not the president who yells at the police for being too heavy handed, it's your city council member or mayor.

There's no information on the electronic ballot to show who's incumbent or who belongs to what party, though. You have to look all that shit up ahead of time. And if there are 3 people from the party you prefer, there's often little obvious way of knowing whom to choose.

And yes. I'm talking about the city council. And the education board members. And the district judges.

[Xandrigity]

They probably don't provide much information so they can't be accused of bias. For the same reason you can't stand inside a certain perimeter of a voting area and hand out political material.

[Reeve]

They probably don't provide much information so they can't be accused of bias. For the same reason you can't stand inside a certain perimeter of a voting area and hand out political material.

If you allow each candidate to provide their own blurb, you can't be accused of bias either.

[Jotaux]

That would be nice. Last time I voted in the provincial elections for BC I looked at the choices and voted independent because I figured they can't be worse than the other 3 ass clowns. Would have been nice to know what that person's platform was about.

[Reeve]

This is what our ballot today actually looked like, btw (though in electronic form):

http://www.harrisvotes.com/SampleBal...ot/E/D0002.pdf

In this case, since it's a primary, all candidates are Democrat, but even in normal elections, they only show the candidate names and no other info.