Register to VOTE! Then DO It Tues. Nov. 6!
October 21, 2018
The 2018 Election Is Almost Here… and the deadline to register online to vote (which you can do here!) in the 2018 General Election in California is tomorrow, Monday Oct. 22.
Missed the deadline? Never fear!
You can register in person through Election Day!
And if you get to the polling place where you think you should be voting, check your sample ballot to see if you’re in the right place — and remember you can ALWAYS ASK FOR A PROVISIONAL BALLOT!
So once you’re registered, and you’re all committed to voting, the next question is, how should you vote?
As a college teacher, I’m sad when I hear from students and other young people that they didn’t vote because they didn’t know how to. And I don’t mean that they didn’t physically know how to show up at the polling place and cast the ballot.
What I mean is, they tell me they don’t know enough to vote.
And because they think they don’t know enough, they don’t think they should vote.
They say they should leave voting to people who know more than they do.
Well, I’m here to tell you that as long as you’re 18 and a citizen of the United States, you know as much as all the other people who educate themselves on the issues and you have as much of a right to vote as they do. But I will admit right now, that for me personally, there’s lots on my plate — like blogging here about voting and other cool stuff that’s going on. Not to mention all of the blogging about wine, food, and travel on my Wine Predator blog. I mean that wine is NOT going to drink itself– and those blog posts to write themselves either! (So you know how many words I’ve written so far this year? Let’s just say I wrote 2500 words about Champagne on Friday and another 2500 words about Lirac on Saturday — and at least 5k words this month on Art Predator! I’ve actually written the equivalent of two novels so far this year on my blogs!)
So what do I do? How do I educate myself in the limited time that I have so I know how to vote on the issues that matter to me? Well, I read — A LOT. But there still so much to keep track of it can be overwhelming!
Some years, I’ve gotten together with friends to go over the ballot and discuss it. But these days, with the advent of social media, it is much easier to gather the opinions of the people I respect. As I’ve come to admire the work of Indivisible, I’ve also come to trust them, so if you’re wondering how to vote and why, I recommend checking out their voter guide for your area. Here’s a link to the Indivisible Ventura vote guide. In particular, I know a lot of people are concerned about which judges to vote for — and I like that they provide a number of charts like this one; they explain what the chart means at the link along with why they are making these recommendations:
So complete that sample ballot at home in advance! (Seriously you don’t want to be figuring it out in the ballot box with your phone… but if you are, search for Indivisible’s ballot guide!) And what to do when in doubt?
Well here’s some pretty basic advice:
Because there’s a lot at stake which I talk about in the next post…
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