Monday night I heard on the news that there was an election. Since the polling place is right next door to work I went over on my lunch break and voted, even though I had no idea what was on the ballot.
Turned out there was only 1 issue, which was Carthage school board. I was supposed to select 2 names, but since I had never heard of any of them, I just selected the two blank write-in candidates and cast my ballot for no one. I figured an ill-informed vote in a very low turnout election is worst than in a high turnout election.
Makes me wonder though… why did we need to have an election for just that one issue? Couldn’t it have waited until the next major election? Probably has to do with when terms expire. Maybe other parts of the county had more issues? But considering that each election supposedly costs the county $150,000 it seems like maybe the days of having several elections a year for this issue and that should be over. I like the idea of having at most one election per year. So that means things like school board terms and city council, etc… will likely have to be aligned to the time of year when presidential or congressional elections are…. but that’s ok with me.
I would personally rather go vote once on a ballot with 10 issues than vote 10 times on ballots with 1 issue. I think it would increase turnout overall, and it would probably save the county a lot of money.
And I don’t know how they would do this to prevent hackers and duplicate voting but I think it would be nice if they made it possible to vote online as well as physically go to the polls. I know I would be a more active voter if I could vote from the convenience of my sofa. I think it would draw in the younger crowd and they would get more participation.
But that’s just my two cents.
I agree, Ryan. I think we should have two election times–once for national and/or state issues, once for local issues. The national/state one could stay in November (pretty sure it’s already that way), and local issues could all be dealt with on one day a year.