I've blogged before about how important I feel voting is. Yesterday was a municipal election and as always I voted on my way into work. All day I proudly wore my "I voted" sticker. I work in a youth-centric library. One of our afterschool kids asked me who I voted for and I explained the concept of secret ballot. But they do notice and it is a chance to be a rolemodel without saying a word.
That being said if you're an ALA member, you have until April 22nd to vote. I have, but only about 10% of the membership has. Vote! It's your civic and professional duty. ALA makes it easy with candidate bios and statements of concerns right on the ballot. I wish the municipality did that. (Instead I looked it up and typed who I wanted to vote in a note on my iphone. I'm lousy at remembering names when it comes to the school board candidates.) If you're an ALSC member, you can vote for me (Elizabeth Moreau) for Newbery Award Committee.
So off you go! Go vote!
2 comments:
There's reasons municipal elections include as little information as possible. Cost is probably the simplest (it costs more to print more), but it also introduces a potential for bias. There's laws to control what order names appear on the ballot so any given election commissioner can't choose the order that best fits his agenda. Professional elections can be a bit more forthcoming, since they don't need to carry quite the same level of "absolute fairness" government elections do.
I agree that it would be cost prohibitive to put in bios/statements of concern. It would be nice though if everyone could have a 60 word statement on the ballot to give me a clue. Though it is my duty as a voter to research ahead of time which I do. So yeah, it isn't the same, but I like having the bios right there.
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