So it's the middle of October, and everyone in America that cares about politics is focused on the health care debate raging in Washington (I wonder whether reconciling the two bills will make the final bill more likely to pass the Senate than the HELP bill alone would have been, or less), and maybe also on the financial reforms that are working their way through the congress, or the troop increases that are or are not happening in Afghanistan.. What most people seem to forget is that election day is coming up.

    People don't care about elections in odd years. There may only be initiatives on the ballot. If there are offices on the ballot, they are strictly local. Local elections often aren't well funded, so people may not even know who the candidates are. Now, I live in Kentucky, and this year, there are no elections. This happens from time to time. There have been special elections throughout the year in different parts of the state, though none in my county. Some of these have been issue elections, like when a city had about 10% of it's population decide that it would remain illegal to sell liquor in the city. Others have been to fill vacant seats in the state senate, where the governor, a Democrat, has been whittling away at the Republican majority by granting appointments to Republican senators, and then campaigning for the Democrat in the special election.

    The problem with these local elections is that people don't vote in them. I regularly hear the complaint that people feel their vote is wasted or useless in a presidential election, and largely they are right (this could be fixed by reforming or doing away with the electoral college, but that's a topic for another day). The fact is that unless you live in a swing state, it's pretty well already determined which party your state is going to vote for. That's why so much attention is focused on the swing states, and even on swing areas in those swing states. The same holds true on a smaller scale when electing a governor, but not as much because there is no electoral college in a governor's race.

    It's interesting that these same people who despair of getting their guy elected to the white house because their vote doesn't really count, and yet are passionate about who should be or should have been elected, often don't know who is running for the mayor's office. Let me clue you in on a secret. Unless you live in New York or LA, or a similarly large city, the difference in a mayoral election will likely be less than 100. I've heard of them being less than 10. I could change an election that close with the readership of this blog most days. Remember that vote on alcohol sales? 10% got to have their way, because they outnumbered those who turned out in favor of the proposition by less than a hundred people. Less than 20% turned out to vote, in an election that was decided by less than a hundred votes.

    The point of all of this is that while it's hard to have much influence on the presidential election by voting, it's easy to have a huge effect on a local election. Unfortunately, no one pays much attention to local elections. I had thought this was because people thought they were unimportant, but someone suggested to me that it might actually have more to do with how hard it is to find out about local issues and elections. In order to test how hard it was to get a sample ballot, I just googled Lincoln County Clerk, because most states probably have a Lincoln County. I took the first six, and went to the clerks' websites. In exactly half of them, I was able to get a sample ballot in three clicks. I think this is evidence that it is indeed too hard to get information on local elections.

    We live in the digital age. The New York Times has declared the age of email to be over, because people are switching to facebook and twitter.  I don't know that I would go that far, but it is a fair bet that most Americans have at least one email address, just as they have at least one phone number. There are some who don't, but they are getting to be fewer every year. So here's the plan. Why can't the county clerk gather an email address from each registered voter for the purpose of emailing them the sample ballot? Or, if that is seen to be too much an invasion of your privacy, contract with a webmail service to provide an email address just for politics, where not only could the clerk send the ballot, but you could be contacted about local issues from both sides? Exactly what is allowed to be emailed could be debated and decided at a state or even a precinct level.

    Then, as part of registering as a candidate, we could require one to provide not only a website but a social networking page (facebook, twitter, maybe a new politics-only network will show up for this, but it's not really needed. Most politicians are on facebook, if you know how to find them.) It would be to the advantage of the candidates, as it would increase their exposure. The clerk could then email, just once, the contact information for the candidate to each registered voter. If each candidate has to submit the same information, and each email gives out just that info, it can hardly be considered an endorsement of any one candidate. That way the voter has an easy way to find the basic information about each candidate, and can make something closer to an informed decision. And that's the plan.

    Would this disenfranchise those without access to email? No, but it would mean they would have to work harder to figure out who to vote for. This is a small part of the population, though, and it is a part that already has the highest representation in the voting process, so I don't think it's a problem. What I think it is is a way to increase not only the number of voters, but also the quality of their voting. I'm not expecting that they will all vote the way I will, but they will be voting for a reason, and not, hopefully, just for a party.

    This is something that would have to be implemented locally, though. We are talking about getting more people to vote in local elections, because they matter, and it would be wrong, not to mention unconstitutional, for the federal government to mandate local election policy. It is a good idea across the country, though. I don't have readers in every state yet, but with your help we can get this idea to every state election board in the country. First, send the plan to your state's board of elections. Then, send this link to friends in as many states as you can. Maybe we can start to see a movement toward better politicians getting elected at the local level, because these are often the ones who then get elected to higher office.