How to Vote Blue

This post is for first-time and occasional voters. Please send a link to it to every first-time or reluctant voter you know. It lays out an easy six-step process for making the most of your vote.

Vote for every office and measure on your ballot if you can. That approach advances Democratic and progressive causes such as democracy, fairness, equality and a strong safety net. It also helps build your Democratic party from the grass-roots level, including important local offices. But if you can’t fill out the entire ballot, vote for what you know best or care most about. It’s far better to vote a partial ballot than not to vote at all.

Ballots can be more complex and intimidating than you expect. Voting for everything can seem tedious, especially the first time. Here are six steps to make it easier:

1. Study the entire ballot before you vote. If you vote in person (whether early or on election day), you can print out a sample ballot for your polling place from the website of your state’s chief election officer, usually the secretary of state. (In some states, such as California and Oregon, you will receive a ballot and an explanatory pamphlet by mail, at your registered address, well before the election.)

To find your sample ballot on the Internet, just search online for “Secretary of State of [name of your state]” or “Voter information for [name of your state].” You can also get state-by-state voting information from the website of the non-partisan League of Women Voters. You will have to input your registered address to make sure you get the right ballot, because what’s on the ballot varies by voting precinct.

Whether or not you vote in person, you can mark up your sample ballot and have it with you as an aid when you vote. To avoid scams and deception, be sure that you are accessing an official state website or the League’s “Vote411” site. (If you vote absentee or by mail, you can study the actual ballot before you vote and skip this Internet printout step.)

2. Vote for every Democrat but no Republican or third-party candidates. Now, when democracy itself is at stake, is no time to get clever or cute. There may have been “reasonable” Republicans or third-party candidates in the past. But this time every vote for someone other than a Democrat will put democracy and social progress at risk. Without even knowing it, you might be voting to support the Demagogue, voter suppression, or election denial, or against democracy itself.

3. For so-called “non-partisan” offices, including judicial offices, look up party affiliations on the Internet and vote accordingly. In most cases, you can discover a candidate’s party affiliation with a single Google search for the candidate’s name. If you can’t find party affiliations that way, search the website of the League of Women Voters. It usually has short one-paragraph statements, written by each candidate for each office.

As you read those statements, look for key words and concepts like “equality,” “fairness,” “democracy,” “equal pay,” “abortion or women’s rights,” and “racism,” which suggest Democratic values. To identify Republicans, looks for emphasis on “crime,” “voter fraud,” abortion bans, extreme libertarian ideas and blaming others for general economic problems. Vote accordingly. Try to vote for every office in order to build a strong local party from the ground up; but don’t vote if you’re not sure who’s on your side.

4. For bond issues, vote “yes” unless the purpose of the bonds seems clearly repulsive to you. Why? Because issuing bonds is a good way to get around Republicans’ distaste for financing government.

Democrats favor government spending for things like families, child care, welfare, education, medical care, public health, senior centers, infrastructure, scientific research and development, and the “safety net.” Republicans want lower taxes for the rich and hence as little government spending as possible, except for the military. So Democrats often propose getting money for good government by issuing bonds. That way, the government gets the needed money immediately from private investors. Taxpayers pay back the principal on the bonds, with interest, only gradually, over time.

Bonds are a tried-and-true method for government to get the money it needs to serve the people without inviting the “tax and spend” name-calling that is Republicans’ principal propaganda ploy. I can’t remember a bond issue for which, after careful study, I didn’t vote “yes.” I’ve even voted for bonds to build and improve prisons. Why? Because localities usually do that only when existing prisons get so overcrowded and run down that conditions for inmates are intolerable. Or they build or improve prisons when courts order them to do so in response to inmates’ lawsuits.

Anyway, most bond issues on ballots are just to authorize bond issues. The actual issuance of bonds requires another step: approval by a legislative body, whether the city or county council or the state legislature. That’s why most ballot measures include an upper limit on the dollar amount of bonds, not a precise amount. Local governments use the general authority of voters to issue bonds as needed.

For localities, bonds are like your buying a car or dishwasher on installments, or your house on a mortgage. They are a standard way of making government spending easier by paying gradually, over time. In the current era of rising interest rates, there’s yet another reason to issue bonds now: future bonds will only get more expensive to issue as interest rates rise.

5. For state constitutional measures and other voter initiatives, look for general themes. Does the measure expand rights, fund families or children, authorize sensible regulation, fight climate change, strengthen the “safety net” for the poor and unfortunate, or make life easier for working people? If so, it’s likely a Democratic measure. Does it restrict rights, limit government’s power to tax, reduce or curtail funding for families or children, subsidize fossil fuels or big corporations, make voting more complex or harder, or weaken the “safety net”? Then it’s likely a Republican measure.

You needn’t understand all the details and nuances of a constitutional change or initiative to know whether it supports your own values. Often a quick Internet search will tell you who or what supports and opposes the measure and thus how to vote. (But beware of scams and disinformation; search only sources you trust, such as the League of Women Voters non-partisan Vote411 website.)

6. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you lack time, energy or knowledge to vote on everything on your ballot, vote for the main offices and measures that you know and care about, and ignore the rest. It’s better—much better—to vote a partial ballot than not to vote at all. Happy voting!


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