Voting for People You've Never Heard of

[Ben]

So I'm filling out my mail-in ballot, and as usual there's a ton of local/regional people I've never heard of. This time, mostly judges for various state appellate courts. I always try and do an internet search for these kinds of people to try and find out what their affiliations are and their stance on subjects important to me, however a majority of the time, there is little to no information to help me make a decision. It's even difficult to find out what political party they belong to. The votes in CA for these positions are not candidates running against each other, but simple yes/no votes on if a candidate should be appointed to the position.

The closest I came this time was finding out which governor originally appointed them, and lacking any other information, have been defaulting to "yes" if they were appointed by a Republican, and "no" if they were appointed by a Democrat. Not that it means anything here in CA, or any other state for that matter, but I have nothing else to go on.

How do you guys handle voting in these circumstances, if you even run into them in your own states?

[Chuck Dye]

I just left such races unvoted.  Perhaps I have left a free vote to some poll worker and should have written in "None of the above," but I'll risk that.

[lee n. field]

leave it blank

[bedlamite]

We usually have a number of races where there is no challenger, and only one candidate. I usually write in any of a number of cartoon characters. This year I think I'll vote for Yosemite Sam for sheriff.

[230RN]

After the candidacies and issues have been certified for the ballot, our County Clerk provides a brochure for free which discusses all the issues and most of the candidates on your particular ballot for your particular area.

As an example, for whether Judges should be retained in office, there's a Pro versus Con discussion for each written by lawyer's associations and other directly involved personnel.  

All quite non-partisan, quite neutral, in sum.

It must be a royal pain for our Clerk, since there are probably a dozen different ballots for this county, what with different municipal issues and judges, but somehow she gets it done.  Which is probably why she's stayed in office for as long as I can remember.  Her name is Pam Anderson.... no jokes, please.

This brochure gets mailed out automatically if you're a long-standing registered voter.  If you've registered on the day of election (yuch!) I guess you have to vote like all the other noncompos mentis folks do and vote with your belly or how the Union tells you to vote. <snark>

I don't know if all that info is available online, I never had to check.

Terry, 230RN

REF:
http://jeffco.us/clerk-and-recorder/

[Tallpine]

The votes in CA for these positions are not candidates running against each other, but simple yes/no votes on if a candidate should be appointed to the position.

You could just be an a$$ and vote NO for all of them 

[Regolith]

We usually have a number of races where there is no challenger, and only one candidate. I usually write in any of a number of cartoon characters. This year I think I'll vote for Yosemite Sam for sheriff.

County sheriff race here is for a Teamsters representative (the union that represent the sheriff's deputies here) with little experience vs. the guy who was more or less handpicked by his predecessor, and has a boatload of certs.

Not a hard choice, that one...

Got three or four races for the Soil & Water Director that have no challengers. Think I'm going to write in characters from "Parks and Recreation". Did the same thing with unchallenged judges last election, except I used characters from "Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law". 

[RoadKingLarry]

You could just be an a$$ and vote NO for all of them 

That's what I do on our "Should Judge So & so be retained?" ballot items except in the rare case of one I have knowledge that they are OK.

[Hawkmoon]

We usually have a number of races where there is no challenger, and only one candidate. I usually write in any of a number of cartoon characters. This year I think I'll vote for Yosemite Sam for sheriff.

There have been three elections for President in which I have received [at least] one vote for President.

Hey, we're supposed to vote for the best-qualified candidate, right? IMHO I was far better qualified than either of the major party candidates.

[Grebnaws]

Uncontested positions always receive a no vote from me. If my job were up for vote without competition they would assume it must not be an important enough job and they would simply delete the position and force two of us to share the work done by three and write it up as a savings. Then they would do the same thing again in 3 more years leaving just one person to do the work previously done by three. I like to think that my no vote discourages people from getting into politics.

[MillCreek]

The Washington Secretary of State publishes a handy and thorough voting booklet that has material about the candidates and the full text of all proposed referendums and the like.  I carefully read the booklet, do any additional research and then vote.  I will at times leave an item blank, and when it comes to candidates, I vote the person, not the party.

For me, the most important thing is to read the actual full text of the proposed ballot measures, since you can find a lot of surprises that way.

[Tallpine]

when it comes to candidates, I vote the person, not the party.

Trouble is that for legislative office you may be giving the worser party control of the procedures.

Not to mention the "good" candidate who votes his/her party line, and/or gets arm twisting into toeing the line. 

I'm undecided on our state rep: the incumbent is a lousy republican and the opposition is an unknown democrat lady that seems to be running for office as a writer's research project, and doesn't intend to win.  I'm thinking about voting for her just to make both of them unhappy 

[Scout26]

You could just be an a$$ and vote NO for all of them 

Which is what I do with all the "Should so&so be retained as X".   The State Bar ass-c. just says "Qualified" with no detail.  Although this year there is a judge in Cr)ook county that they are running ads AGAINST.  If I was able to vote there, I would look up why the Bar ass-c. hates this guy.  It might be a cause to actually like him. 

I live in a fairly red county.  The Dem candidates are sacrificial lambs who should realize they have zero chance of winning.  Although there was a D that did get elected to the county board in 2008 (Obama year) from the area with lots of illegals.  He then began to do stupid D tricks and was vote out in 2012.  By a lot.