Today (November 5th, 2019) there is a municipal election in New Bedford, MA, the city I call home. I woke up actually excited to research my options and vote to take part in my local government. That excitement has quickly turned into disappointment and frustration after attempting to research the ballot to make my decisions.
Lack of Information
I searched for a good amount of time with no success for a preview of today’s ballot. All of the usual places I visit to get a preview of the ballot so I can research did not have any information about today’s election in New Bedford:
After I finally found a list of people and seats that will be printed on the local ballot, I thought I was getting somewhere. But I was wrong.
An article on local newspaper’s website (The Standard Times) had some information. But, it only listed the names that will be on today’s ballot, the conditions they were running (incumbent, unopposed, etc.), and the number of votes each person received in the prelim.
There were no links to any other articles or resources with more information about the people running or the problems facing each area of the city’s government. Unless I am missing the connection between McDonald’s bringing back 15 iconic Happy Meal toys, or “Nama’s Apple Cake” and the New Bedford school committee.
I went back to the drawing board and finally came across an article that looked promising: “New Bedford Election 2019: Know Your Candidates“. I became 10x more frustrated when I clicked this article, though. I was alerted that I had used up all 3 of my allowed article views for the month and was presented with a paywall that blocked me from reading the article.
That article (which is a short breakdown with links to other articles on each candidate) and any other article linked to within are now inaccessible for me to read. Yes, I am a web developer and I can dig through code to get around the paywall, but not many people can. And not everyone can afford to pay for the membership required to see the article.
Importance of Local Elections
All voting is important. But, in my opinion, voting on the local level is one of the most important things that you can do. The people elected and decisions made in these elections directly impact your family, your community, and your way of life in a way that becomes very apparent in the short term.
Your city needs a new high school and the voters approve a referendum to provide funding? You will eventually drive by the high school getting built (maybe even send your children there) and see the results of that ballot question first hand. Seeing these positive results reinforces the importance of voting in a democracy on a larger scale where results are usually longer term.
Voting Is For Everyone and Should Not Be Hard
Voting is a fundamental part of democracy. While trying to find the information I wanted, I inadvertently used up my free article views on that website (which is not made clear when first visiting the site) and as a consequence of the local newspaper’s poor curation (which is the only location for information on the candidates in this election), I was locked out of the valuable information I actually wanted.
Putting any information that will help voters make more informed decisions about local government elections behind a paywall is wrong, and in my opinion unethical.
Voting should not be hard. Finding information about elections should not be hard. There should not be pay walls blocking anyone from obtaining information about ballot questions or the stances of those running for elected positions.
If you run a publication that has a paywall, I understand. Everyone needs to make money and that content is written by paid writers who deserve to be fairly paid. But, there should be an exemption for this type of information for a period of time leading up to the election as a public service.
Will I Vote Today?
Maybe. But probably not. I’d prefer to not vote over voting for random people that I don’t know anything about. I was frustrated about it enough to write this blog post instead of going to vote. Hopefully this will encourage someone to help make information about local elections more accessible and it will have been worth the time I spent writing this post instead of circumventing the paywall of my local newspaper to make informed decisions in today’s municipal election.
In 2017, the New Bedford city election saw only a 25% of all registered voters cast a ballot with 14,098 of the 56,237 registered residents showing up. With the difficulty I experienced today as an enthused voter, I can see why.
2 responses to “The Chore of Voting in Local Elections”
I had a similar experience at my last local election too. Only the incumbent had really any info online. For the rest, I think you just had to go to the town hall meeting to learn anything about them.
Sometimes there’s a lot of push saying “go vote! You’re bad if you don’t!” But I think the only benefit to voting blindly is to just stay in the habit. It’s great you can vote for free, but getting informed about the vote should also be free.
**i think you had a typo in “Putting any information that will help voters make more informed decisions about local government elections is wrong, and in my opinion unethical.” You’re missing something like “behind a paywall” before “is wrong”. Feel free to delete this part of my comment.
Thanks, Michael! You’re right. I fixed the typo. That’s what I get for tinkering before publishing 😆
I agree on the habit point. I feel guilty not going to vote this time around. But at the same time, I know deep down it’s better to not vote if I am not informed.
It’s also worth noting that the quality of information out there is another argument I tried to keep out of this post. Having actual information out there is another battle. “We’re going to do x, y, and z!” is the usual “information” candidates put out there. But, the actual information that should be out there is “We’re going to do x, y, and z by doing a, accomplishing b, and changing c in this way.”