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  • Check a sample ballot so you know what races are up for a vote. Don't let the first time you see a candidate be at the voting location.

    My government publishes a booklet of candidate statements and details of ballot measures that gets sent out to all voters. Candidates can lie in their statements so don't trust the ones who sound agreeable, but I can usually rule out more than a few based on them strongly supporting issues I'm against. This lets me rule out the worst choices for me and focus my research on a smaller set of candidates/races where the choice isn't as obvious. Check candidate websites for a similar statement. Focus on ruling out people you strongly disagree with. Bookmark the ones that need more digging.

    Then I tend to check voter guides published by news organizations and charities with a similar lean as me. I don't follow them directly, but they give me a sense of who people with similar leanings support. This has helped me discover some candidates who were directly misleading in their statements and didn't have the support of the people they claim agree with them. If any names in the voting guide surprise you, dig deeper on them.

    Party affiliation is unfortunately meaningful in federal elections, and many top level state elections as well, but avoid voting straight ticket based on party. There are often local elections where party affiliation isn't as important. It may matter if my governer is Red or Blue ,but it probably matters less what my Coroner is (...I'll admit though that my feelings on this are changing in recent years. I'm still against straight ticket voting because it's important to check each race individually.) Try to find a basic 2 sentence or so description of each position that's up for election so you know what kind of power that position has. That will help you judge if a candidate's stances on certain issues matter for their position. It's great that my Coroner supports X but that's irrelevant to their job so I won't factor it in.

    Finally I make sure to read the long form of every ballot measure or amendment. The short version almost always sounds appealing but often the long form uncovers really important nuances. Never just vote based on the short form, it's way too easy to sneak in really terrible policies by constructing an agreeable tagline.

  • I vote by mail, so usually once I get the packet, I'll just go through and research people. I won't lie, if I see someones political sign constantly with a candidate I don't like, I take them off the list without researching. There's at least one in my area that is always with Trump. Didn't even give her a Google search. I usually don't do it all at once, but I get it in before the deadline. 👍🏾

  • If it's local city elections, it's difficult as the line between parties gets fuzzy. Some candidates have little to no info on their policies and such.

    If I can't find anything about them at all, I won't vote for them. If they're hyper religious or make it their main focus of their campaign, I won't vote for them. Other than that, it's just a coin toss.

    Larger elections like stare and national are a bit easier. If they have the letter R next to their name, it's safe to assume they're insane, evil, or both. It's become the norm these days. That makes it a choice between independants and democrats. I guess it comes down to which has better policies on issues I care about.

  • I usually start with Calmatters. They tend to have good writeups for CA ballots when I’m looking for how candidates feel about specific policies.

    Then I go to my local independent newspaper, which runs interviews with all major local candidates. I usually have a pretty good idea of who I’m going for by the time I read the interviews, but they’ll often put me the over the edge for a particular candidate and help me finalize my decision.

  • Yes, generally I will look in my county newspaper for the less high profile races because they run short interviews with a lot of the down ballot candidates. Higher office candidates I'm generally familiar with long before the election

  • In addition to some sources others covered I like to listen to one or two interviews from local news orgs, you can learn a lot about what a politician values and prioritizes listening to them speak with little interruption, not for how well they speak but the content they consider important.

  • I get so drunk I don't know who I'm voting for!

    • This was a reference to an older Jay Foreman video on this topic, wasn't found as funny as I'd hoped.

      In all seriousness I look up candidates and try to find several sources discussing them to attempt to avoid biases from one source. I like to see how they've voted as a representative in the past (if they were one). For voting on propositions I will look up what it does, the supporting and critical arguments, and then who supports and who doesn't support it. That's usually how I go about it.

31 comments