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SeanFromQueens t1_ix88aj1 wrote

Reply to comment by Kodiak01 in Democrat Chris Poulos Won His Connecticut House Race by a Single Vote by poliscijunki

It's because the races that are most profitable to report on (statewide or has a candidate who is incendiary) is all those individuals are basing their judgment on. If news outlets reported on policy differences those same individuals would complain about it all being too boring, but the rest of the electorate would be better informed at the detriment of the news outlets' profit margins.

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Kodiak01 t1_ix8anig wrote

> If news outlets reported on policy differences those same individuals would complain about it all being too boring, but the rest of the electorate would be better informed at the detriment of the news outlets' profit margins.

Those differences are precisely why I like my absentee ballot. For all of those unfamiliar races, it gives me the time to look them up right then and there to see their policy differences. It took me nearly twenty minutes at work to fill out the most recent ballot, time which I consider well spent.

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SeanFromQueens t1_ix8ebza wrote

The problem that I'm pointing out is that the news outlets filling their airtime/column inches with the least informative races and it turns off the low information voter who judges the election just on the most reported candidates. I suspect that if the news outlets were informative and went in depth into policy differences, the same low information voters that judged that the candidates are all bad/corrupt/liars/what-have-you would still not vote because it was too boring. Shaming the non-voter is not effective at turning them out to vote but neither is informing them because there's a segment of the public who simply will not ever be interested in voting, they will come up with a rationale after the fact.

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DicmoVolant t1_ix8cwr7 wrote

You can print a sample ballot, fill it out at your leisure, and bring it with you to the polls. Still more convenient to vote absentee, but in case your ballot never arrives, you can still take your time and research who you’re voting for. Our ballots never showed up this election, so we used samples.

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Kodiak01 t1_ix8dhn5 wrote

I vote absentee because I work out of State and I'm one accident detour or bad string of red lights from missing the poll, and even then I have to speed to get there.

The one time I didn't get my ballot to send in, I drove like a madman and made it with less than 5 minutes to spare. Now, if I don't see it by the week before an election, I go to the Town Clerk's office (which is open until 7pm on Thursdays) and pick it up in person.

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