Comment on Do people vote just by name recognition on the ballot or do they vote for the issues?
janus2@lemmy.zip 2 weeks agoyeah, basically the only way to vote informed is to spend several hours researching the candidates and their values, ballot measures’ implications, etc.
before the internet that shit must have been goddamn near impossible.
it’s a lot to ask of a population who is largely overworked, underpaid, and alienated from their communities to the point where having a few uninterrupted hours is a fucking luxury few of us have even occasionally. and usually we want to spend those hours with friends and family… so doing something boring like voter research is a hard sell
ironically, informed voting is one of the ways we could start to chip away at free time scarcity
scarabic@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I wish it were simply a matter of time and finding a few hours. I can do that. But the confounding factor is that while the internet makes information easily available, the downside is that the internet makes information easily available. The typical experience of trying to research any ballot measure is that you’ll find 40 different sources of information about it, all openly biased and directly contradicting each other.
Ultimately, many ballot measures are complex initiative proposals which need to be reviewed and approved by qualified professionals over weeks or even months, with multiple revisions being part of the process.
I don’t know how to evaluate building project plans and I really never will. Even assuming I have 3 hours for ballot research, there can be dozens of measures every time.