Vote Early, Vote Often

So, we went down and early voted today. I have such mixed feelings about this, about how much it really matters. And also some very strong frustrations about the lack of transparency and voter education that goes into this. Sure, we've all heard about two of the seven people running for president. But beyond that? At least here in Illinois, not only was information not shared, it was downright hard to find.

I did actually look too, I thought I'd found names of judges who weren't qualified to stay in their positions. However none of those names were on my ballot. I went to a forum discussing the constitutional convention we're supposed to vote on, and left feeling just as confused as when I went in. I had assumed that everything would be paper ballots, with touch screen voting only for people who needed it. Where we went today, every voting box was electronic.

If I'm finding it this complicated, what does that say about the state of voting here in Chicago? Is this common to cities, voting in general, or just here where corruption is rampant and expected?

As someone who grew up with neighbors and teachers who were in the state legislature, I knew everyone running before I was old enough to vote. Occasionally candidates would stop by our house to chat in the evening about their positions. Candidate comparisons seemed common and easy to find. I even heard that in Portland, people received position statements in the mail, all in one easy to browse pamphlet. It's very disengaging to feel that not only does my vote not matter on a federal level, but my vote even doesn't matter on a local level to those that are running for it.

And yet even feeling that way, I still had a sense of obligation to go and check all the little boxes. By the time I got to the end of was it twelve electronic pages? I'd pretty much checked out myself.