Just a reminder that much of the US has local elections on Tuesday. Local government matters a lot - things like zoning and building codes, decisions about walkability and bikeability, mass transit, whether science is taught truthfully, and the right to have your vote counted at all are on the ballot in many places.
Reminder: If you aren’t fighting conservatism, you aren’t fighting climate change.
These off-season elections are still important for a variety of reasons, including those that OP posted, but also some locales have already enacted voter registration pruning policies where if you fail to participate in X elections, they can remove your active voter status. Imagine not being eligible to vote for president in 2024 because you thought the local school bond issue wasn’t important this year.
Register for early mail-in voting if you are able – they send your ballot to your house, along with guidebooks for the issues on the ballot. If that is not enough (or not provided by your state), find publicly-funded or nonprofit articles on the issues, such as PBS, NPR, or Ballotpedia to give you the rundown of the legalese they sometimes use to confuse the voting public. When you have voted (read the instructions carefully, you don’t want your vote thrown out because you forgot to sign the envelope, or missed a deadline), you just stick it in the provided return mailer and drop it off at any outgoing mail box, or even a ballot dropoff in some places.
Additionally, ignore those road signs you see from July to November. They are massively funded by both sides, and often reduce important issues to tiny memorable phrases and/or fear responses.
Your vote still matters, now more than ever.
we actually had to go online to look to see if there was even an election here locally… as there had been no media coverage, no fliers in the mail, no ads on tv or radio, no annoying signs littering the right-of-ways… nothing.
turns out there isn’t. everything in the ‘off years’ is done in the spring (judges, school boards, and other local positions), and no special election or vote of any sort.
