Call me an old curmudgeon, but even as a new voter I was somewhat hostile toward "Rock the Vote" and similar efforts that glorify the act of voting without so much as a nod to the distinction between simply bumbling into a voting booth and going in there informed. I plead with people to only vote in those contests about which they have done their homework - if that means you just end up voting for president and senator, so be it. Do that and feel good about it! Taking the time to learn about every race and issue you actually vote on can be hard - but it gives you a very real sense of purpose and accomplishment that guessing just doesn't. You have to put in some effort to educate yourself with more than commercials - and clearly many Americans don't, because money plays such a decisive role in our politics. But I'm not likely to convince anyone who thinks commercials are sufficient voter education to the contrary with something written and placed on the web, as they'll never read it...and I don't have the money for a commercial, so I'm writing this for those who want to learn about races, but don't know how to go about it.
There's never a shortage of information - heck, good information, even - about races near the top of the ballot - president, senator, and the most closely contested congressional races. In Minnesota, we are doubly-blessed, with newspapers rich in political information and a public radio service that offers what I confidently assert is the best local political coverage in the nation. But what about the most local of races, like school board and mayor, and those for judgeships?
Start by finding out exactly what you'll be given the opportunity to vote on. You can generally find a copy of your ballot in your local newspaper, or in the case of more tech-savvy jurisdictions, online through the county elections office. (Here's the one for Hennepin County, for example.) Print out a copy of this and use it to keep notes - you can bring it with you and refer to it in the voting booth. You can also bring up the content of your ballot (though not the exact image) through the Secretary of State's Pollfinder system (click on "Click Here for a List of Candidates" after the system finds your polling place).
For races near the top of the ticket, you are probably already saturated with information. In case you want a chance to review a candidate's positions in some detail, with a few of their own words explaining their stands, at least for those willing to take the "Political Courage Test," Project Vote Smart is a great place to find it. Another great resource is Minnesota Public Radio, especially the Midday program, which features thoughtful, hour-long interviews and debates, archived for listening online.
Learning about judges is a far bigger challenge, but some of them reply to the League of Women Voters' questionnaires for their Voter Guide, at which you can bring up your own ballot, then click on the "Candidate Info" tab to bring up what they have on each candidate. Alas, judges generally offer very similar platitudes. Typically more complete (for judges) is the Minnesota Lawyer's Judicial Elections guide; but here too the questionnaire answers often fail to offer much distinction. The judges' resumes also tend to look quite similar to the uneducated eye, but it can be helpful to find out who has appointed and hired a given judge over the years. If they are a new incumbent, I usually start with who appointed them - sure, even partisan demagogues can make a good appointment or hire, but if you deeply distrust the judgement of the governor who appointed a judge, it's reason enough to look carefully at their opponent. Also consider their endorsements, which you generally have to go to their website to find (if they have one). A very few judges wear their agendas on their sleeves - take Tim Tinglestad, for example, who is running against incumbent state supreme court justice Paul H. Anderson. Tinglestad's religious agenda is pretty easy to discern, and to my mind, he shouldn't be sitting on a judicial bench anywhere, let alone the Minnesota Supreme Court. More nuanced is the race between recent Pawlenty appointee Lorie Skjerven Gildea and her challenger for her state supreme court seat, Deborah Hedlund. Each has a web presence, with Hedlund explaining her reasons for challenging the incumbent in a U-Tube video. MPR's Midday debate between the two is a great way to decide your vote, but if you don't have a fast enough connection for that, check out the Twin Cities Daily Planet's story on the race. There's one other statewide judicial race, for one of the seats on the state Court of Appeals. It pits incumbent Terri J. Stoneburner against Dan Griffith. I don't find very compelling Griffith's argument that he should be elected (rather than appointed) primarily to prove that it can be done. His quoting John Jay's sentiment "We should elect of all people Christians" as the last line in his answers to questions undermines my willingness to believe him to be evenhanded, and Dean Barkley's endorsement of Stoneburner pretty much seals the deal. For district court judge races, you can look for debates and the like (there are a few, for example, for the Ramsey County District Court seat), but mostly you'll have to rely on the candidate web pages and the Voters' Guides I mentioned above.
Your local newspaper is usually the best source of information for very local races, like school board, park commission, and city council, as well as local ballot initiatives and referenda. For example, where I live in south Minneapolis, we have a monthly paper called The Bridge, which does a very nice job of covering some of the local ballot questions we are voting on in Minneapolis. Local candidates are also covered in the League of Women Voters' Voter Guide, and many of them do reply to their questionnaire. For something like Soil and Water Conservation Board, it may well be the only information you can find. Searching for specific (especially less-common) names with a search engine will also often yield results: you'll likely need to put quotes around the name, as it appears on the ballot, for the best results with this approach.
There are several statewide ballot initiatives this election as well - if I have time (I have a 3-month old!) I'll return here to add some tips about learning about these.
My thanks to The Bridge's Jeremy Stratton for his article on this topic and some of the useful links provided there. I leave you with his "joke," to which we both wish people would someday just respond with "huh?"
How many American voters does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None. They prefer to be left in the dark.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in this article are strictly those of its author, and do not indicate any official positions or endorsements of the Independence Party of Minnesota.
