Ballot info for local yokels

[prog]

Welcome back to LiveJournal! Enjoy your stay.

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This makes me very pleased: If you're voting in Massachusetts next week, you can use this website to plug in your address and see what your ballot will look like, including referenda. Heretofore I have always been surprised by a couple of these questions, and peeved. I have wanted to see exactly this service for many election cycles.

http://www.wheredoivotema.com/bal/myelectioninfo.php

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I will throw in the rule of thumb that I think I picked up from, erm, either cortezopossum or wrog (both of whom are electionistas in their respective communities), that if a referendum doesn't make any sense to you even after you think about and (if you get the chance) research it, a good rule of thumb is to vote NO.

This seems pretty obvious, since the alternative is basically playing a game of "what does this button do?" with your vote, but I hadn't seen it spelled out like that in the past, and I can dig it.

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My hope and anger are both rising together as Tuesday draws closer. They are both definitely exceeding levels seen in 2004. I am continually crafting and refining my Schrodinger's Cat of an LJ post for that evening, at once a cathartic victory howl and grave-pissing, and a vomiting of hate-fueled rage calling for the obliteration of the enemy. I will not actually post it because in either eigenstate it's rather horrible, really.

Anyway, I am very excited.

Comments

[jadelennox]

I think a better rule of thumb, if you don't understand a question, is not to vote.

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

Isn't that effectively the same as voting no?

[prog.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think that's the idea. The assumption here is that NO always means "Whatever this is, keep it the way it is."

But OTOH it's not the same as not voting on it, because a NO vote cancels out a YES, were a NULL doesn't. Hm.

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily. Every once in a while we get some goof-ball referenda questions with double and triple negatives so nobody is ever really sure what they're voting for -- and as election officials we technically aren't allowed to help the voter understand the question.

[jadelennox]

No. It's majority of voters on that question, not majority of people who turn out. So voting no effects the numbers in a way that non-voting doesn't.

[prog.livejournal.com]

In the past - as recently as the most recent primaries, actually - when an unexpected choice of candidates was thrust at me in the voting booth, I'd literally flip a coin. My only other options seemed to be turning in the ballot as spoiled and going home, or leaving it unmarked. But I didn't wanna do the former and didn't know what would happen if I did the latter.

I am a menace. This is why this website makes me so happy.

[jadelennox]

Leaving it unmarked seems to me to be the right solution there!