Plan your vote.
This year’s general election ends with the usual in-person voting on Tuesday, Nov. 8, a little less than four weeks away.
Voting by absentee ballot is already available and three weeks (including two Saturdays) of the increasingly popular advance voting technique begins Monday, Oct. 17, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Board of Elections offices in the county administration building off U.S. 441 north of Eatonton.
At last week’s meeting of the Putnam Board of Elections and Registration, acting elections supervisor Kimberly Rudolph told the board that virtually all preparations for the general election had been completed.
A complete cadre of veteran and new poll workers has signed up, she said, and training has been completed. This week, poll managers and assistants will review all the checks and balances necessary for completing the procedures and paperwork involved. Over four days last week, every piece of voting-related equipment was tested.
As for voters casting their ballots, most of the news and political advertising we see and hear focuses on the senate and governor races at the top of the ballot. However, the less visible down-ballot races—whether for insurance commissioner or local school board—impact individual voter’s lives as much or often more than statewide or national elections.
So, plan your vote, advisedly beyond the R’s and D’s printed beside each candidate’s name (and sometimes I’s, for incumbents). With typically fewer people voting in these down-ballot races, an added benefit of a thought-out vote magnifies its impact.
A general election every two years is also the only time when state constitutional amendments are on the ballot, and many have tax consequences, either for those pushing an amendment or for those who will have to pay for the desired adjustment. This year there are four. A sample ballot (www. putnamber.com/viewyour- sample-ballot.html) lists them for each local precinct. Read them. Study them before you step into the voting booth. Plan your vote.
A general election also is the only time when voters may “write in” the name of someone other than the names printed on the ballot. While voters may write in Donald Duck or their next-door neighbor’s name, know that these votes will not even be counted.
However, this year Charles Trumbo has gone through the qualifying process so that write-in votes for him will count in the county-wide race for county commission chairman, where Trumbo opposes Republican nominee and current District 3 commissioner Bill Sharp.
A frustrating complication for voters does come up in local and state House races. It has to do with what races the voter may cast a ballot. Putnam County has five voting precincts, and each has geographical boundaries. The county commission has four districts, each with its own boundaries. The board of education has five districts, each with its boundaries. And parts of Putnam lie in two House districts, each with their boundaries.
These boundaries tend to overlap in places, often two or three in the same voting precinct. The result is the creation of as many as 30 different ballots in some years. (With only two local races this year, there will be “only” 10.)
This should be a problem only before one votes while figuring out which races to focus on. Based on the voter’s address, a correct ballot will be sent to absentee voters; likewise, and again based on the voter’s address, the voting machines will place the correct ballot on the screen.
Aside from Trumbo’s write-in challenge, the only contested local race this year involves Democratic incumbent Simone Jones and Republican challenger McKenzie Cardwell for the District 2 seat on the Putnam Board of Education.
The folks who try to study politics objectively tell us three factors are involved in an election: candidates, parties and issues.
Of those three, we hear most loudly about candidates and parties. However, the most powerful and hardest to nail down in determining the outcome of an election are the issues, as felt by the voters. In other words, elections are about us and what we want from our on-going experiment in self-government.
So, the point here is about being an active voter, deciding for yourself what is important to you. Not being a passive couch-potato voter. Nor giving up and not being a voter at all, assuming life will go on like it always has. It may not. So, plan your vote, then vote your plan.