What has candidly started to scare me, after a good # of years voting with the packet (and I assure you I _research_ far beyond what the packet contains) is the fact that I'm often Still Clueless at the end.

A toy example is a recent tax levy for some hospital funding. While the packet contained some thousand-foot information on what it was for and amount/etc, there was NO breakdown as far as I could tell, even online, (certainly no objective/in depth/expert sourced) that actually tried to answer "what are the pros and cons? (this sometimes exists in the packet but often not for some of the more technical decisions) Is this a normal tax? Is the argument for or against disingenous? Are there better ways to source this revenue? Is there proper accountability and controls on utilization, and is the underlying legislation solid?

Take the following not as tooting my horn but to give a point of perspective: I have multiple degrees (including advanced) in applied math and CS, and spend an inordinate amount of my time reading about politics, law, and history. I still feel ill-equipped to vote on many of these topics. It sometimes amazes me that the system is as functional as it is now, if even a portion of decisions are made in this fashion.

This is why local news is incredibly important, their job is to decipher this for you. For national things like Presidential elections, I couldn't care less who my local newspaper endorses, but for local elections I care quite a lot. If you're in the Seattle area, try to support the Seattle Times or the Stranger; they have different political leanings and you may like one and hate the other, but they both do good work in researching candidates and ballot issues before coming up with endorsements.

When I lived in Seattle my voting process was basically "find the Stranger's recommendations, read through them, and very occasionally look deeper into one issue or office". This is definitely an important function of local news, they spend hours trying to make sense of this stuff and tease out hidden connections so you don't have to.

Don't just look at the Stranger. They are fully capable of making some bad, bad recommendations, often for very petty reasons.

I made my own petty decisions in voting, too.

Levies I don't mind so much (fire departments says they need more money? Sure, why not.). But yeah, even with the packet, it's amazing how often I go down the list and don't really care about any of the options (Both of these candidates seem well qualified and capable of representing my district? Does political party even matter for school board? Should we even be electing a Sheriff?)

Maybe it's actually a good thing? Our local elections do a good job of holding candidates accountable that they never err to far off the beaten path?

I wonder if there's some kind of a wisdom-of-the-crowd effect going on. While votes are certainly undermined by political campaigns, I could see it still play an effect.

I love the way WA votes. I've lived in a half dozen US states, and it is by far the best experience. It makes it extremely easy to vote thoughtfully.

No need for a smartphone. The information packet + drop box / postal vote is fantastic.

Yeah, it’s always bothered me—after growing up in CA with information packets—that, now living in TN, there are no such packets mailed to voters. I still don’t understand how anyone feels comfortable voting on anything or anyone at local, county, and state levels here (myself included). Finding impartial information and analysis on measures is extremely difficult (I hesitate to say impossible, but it pretty much is for an average voter). Trying to talk with anyone about ballot measures usually results in blank stares.

I have zero idea what you're talking about. I have never in my life received in informational packet along with my ballot. Like there's a short short summary of ballot issues but nothing about any of the candidates.

Here's an example of what it looks like in WA. https://www.kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/elections/how-to-vo...

These pamphlets are made separately by each county, and large counties sometimes make different versions when there are many local elections or initiatives on the ballot (e.g. King County had 4 versions of this pamphlet, each covering a different set of municipal elections, the corresponding school districts etc).

You get them in the mail in advance of your ballot.

"they"?

What makes you certain progressives will control election infrastructure?

And the same officials who would set the text of the app currently oversee the descriptions of the issues on the ballot that each voter gets. Can you point to a single case of any progressive politician using their power to manipulate those descriptions?

I don't believe any politician has done so in the last 50 years, from either party. Do you have evidence that I'm wrong, or do you have any other evidence that the election infrastructure being so blatantly abused is at all plausible?

> Can you point to a single case of any progressive politician using their power to manipulate those descriptions?

Pretty much every ballot initiative in the last 50 years of the state of Illinois. Search “Illinois Democratic machine” for the history of the abuses.

One recent ballot initiative I recall read “do you support improvements to water reclamation infrastructure of Cook County at the cost of $X bond issue”. It did not mention that the full text of the measure drastically increased the number and salaries of democratic party appointees in the water dept and they would get guaranteed life pensions at 80% of salary.

When a single party has most of the government positions, election corruption abounds.

I wasn’t calling out progressives in particular, just using that as an example. Feel free to swap out progressive with Trumpster or libertarian. This isn’t a critique of political manipulation or abuse. It’s a comment on where we’re going as a society. We’ll gladly accept things like this for just a bit more convenience and dopamine.