Preparing to Early Vote

 

Our ballots for the general election arrived in the mail today. The federal and state choices were straightforward. Then I began looking at county and local offices. I am knee deep in research and reaching out to people to get information that is not available online anywhere.

My first call was to the Soil and Water Conservation office for Wright County to find out which district Saint Michael is in. There were three districts listed on the ballot. We are District 2, and the nice person explained how I could find the district map at their website to confirm. She was also nice enough to give me information on the history of the district and the person who is currently running. I loved it when she said, “The Supervisors  don’t do his for money. We pay them $75.00 for a 4-hour meeting.”

It was fairly easy to find information on the mayoral candidate (running unopposed). I called the city though after discovering I could not find any information on one of the four candidates running for City Council for a four-year term. We can vote for two candidates. Three of the four candidates filed a voluntary election candidate information form which has information on their backgrounds and statements about why they are running. Voluntary is the key word. I found a Facebook page for the candidate who didn’t file the form. His page is set to private and what shows up as public doesn’t say anything about running for office.

I don’t see a deadline on the voluntary election candidate form and hoped a call to the city would answer that question or if they just haven’t got around to downloading the fourth candidate’s form.

The school board member section lists four candidates, and we can vote for up to three. Again, I cannot find any candidate information. I found out two members are currently serving on the board. I reached out to a neighbor to see if she had an idea of where I could get information even though her children are in private school. She texted back that she forwarded my question to a couple of board members she knows.

When I got to the Judges section with twenty-six positions for appointment, I decided to stop for the day. Tomorrow morning, I will begin researching all of the judges.

Being an informed voter takes work!