Rachel and I have been mail in voters for a long time. Rachel started when we moved to Pleasanton in 2007 and I started in 2012. I had a romantic notion of voting and held out before switching to mail in voting because I liked to take the older two girls into the booth with me and let them “pull the lever.”
I remember one of my favorite moments from the voting booth was in 2008 when my Lilly asked which one was the number that was mean to gay people. She was extremely focused on making sure that I did not vote for being mean to gay people, or any people. That kid has had empathy in her bones from the second she made her debut and it brings a tearful smile to my face just thinking about it. While this is a great memory, I find that mail in voting makes for a much better experience for both us parents and our children when it comes to being informed citizens.
I always start by hitting the races that I already know a lot about. In this years case I am already clear on who I am voting for in the Presidential and Congressional races in my district. My wife and I have also spent a lot of time researching candidates in our local City Elections, which is something we all lose site of in the cult of personality driven National Elections. Very often, the elected officials who will have the biggest impact on your own quality of life are those that make decisions about how your town will operate.
We are civic minded folks, Rachel and I. We support candidates by inviting them to put signs in our yard if we like them enough. This year we have yard signs for a mayoral candidate and a school board candidate about to be deployed. We are particularly interested in the school board race because we have two girls who are still in Middle and/or High School and the decisions made by the school board truly impact the quality of their life day in and day out.
But, this means we have a whole bunch of other things to vote on and a knowledge gap exists between what those things mean for us and our neighbors and what the post card sized mailers we get every dang day actually tell us about them. We ultimately resolve this gap with our girls at the kitchen table, with our ballots in hand.
Of course, the process of resolving this gap in information starts well before the evening we sit down to vote. Right now we can already go and use Ballotopedia and get to reading. Also, though it should probably not require me saying so but I highly recommend not using memes on Facebook or 140 character tweets with a meme attached as “research.”
This is one thing we abhor about the modern state of politics in our house, the fact that it has devolved from a time when Thomas Paine wrote a 49 page pamphlet about issues to the modern day where folks shout bumper sticker slogans at one another. By doing mail in voting and having family discussions about the ballot at our kitchen table, we like to think we are helping our kids understand the value of going deeper than bumper stickers and researching the issues to formulate an opinion.
Research means reading multiple perspectives, yes there are more than just two sides to any particular debate, and synthesizing the arguments down to cogent points. Not starting with some garbage someone else put in a cool picture and ignoring the part where you have to read multiple, fact based view points and come up with you mental picture.
I am writing and posting this now because the deadline to register (October 19th) and still participate is fast approaching here in California. Also, the date when ballots will be sent out to all of us in California is October 5th and it isn’t a partisan thing to admit that this year the election will be unlike anything any of us have ever experienced. You will want to fill out your mail in ballot ASAP and get it back to make sure you are counted.
Of note here, in California you can track your ballot and ensure it is counted at this website. Freedom isn’t free, and beyond taxes and service we pay for ours by participating in the process of electing officials to represent us. If you haven’t already, please register and consider asking for a mail in ballot. It is a great way to avoid COVID-19 and teach your children some lessons about how to be an informed and engaged citizen.
How do you ensure your children are engaged in the voting process? Tell me in the comments.
Jeff August Ego Trip 