vote...i double dog dare you

I am less than a week away from my 15+ hour day as an election judge.

I know that voting in primaries is about the least sexy/interesting/recreational thing one can do on a Tuesday, but you know...primaries do impact elections...and I think you all know how I feel about an individual's duty to vote.

(Uhm...you should totally do it. I bet someone in your family at some point in history was refused the right to vote. Immigrants, Woman, Minorities, etc. They would kick this entire nation in the balls if they knew how apathetic we can be about the process electing our local and national representatives.)

And yeah, it's confusing and the ads suck and who has time to figure it all out?

I'm with you.
And I'm here to help.

A great place to start is eVoter.com, where you can find your polling place and see a sample ballot.

I find those ballots pretty helpful.
- You can skip researching the seats that only have one candidate *
- You can focus on the races that you deem the most important of your time/resources.
- If you bring in your list of folks you already know you want to vote for, the actually process goes by SO much faster!
- Lastly, one of many of these folks will be running in November...and you'll be that much more knowledgeable about their candidacy.

*Hell, if you register Green Party for the primary, you only have to actually choose a candidate for one position as, aside from two folks running for Cook County Board President, they only have one person per role running. Bingo Bango, you're done, Greenie!

Also, eVoter has an option on the ballot page to show who received endorsements from various organizations including: Sun Times, Federation of Labor, Citizens for Ethics, Sierra Club and so on.

If you want to see who's the most green candidate, Sierra Club should point you to them. If you are pro-Union, Labor might give you some direction.

In addition, some of the candidates have links to "statements" and other bio and press info.

The point is, with the internet and a reasonably small investment in time, you can be up on the candidates and make a more informed decision.

Bingo. Bango.




Photo by Sarah-Ji