Voting is hard guys! People say it's easy but, be it Presidential, Mid-Term, Mayoral or even you're school's Parents Association, election time sneaks up on us and suddenly we're expected to know a whole bunch of stuff so we can make an informed decision and, for the most part, many of us won't even bother. At best, many of us just rely on popular media and campaign commercials. (Don't argue with me here... if you don't have this problem I'm probably not talking about you.)
I do not wish to (overtly) pass judgement on your mid-term results USicans. We do the same types of things in Canada... heck I'm frequently guilty of it... but maybe it would be better if we got "proactive".
Step 1: Pre-Prepare
Find out what roles you are allowed to vote for right now instead of when it's "too late".Figure out who holds those roles, what they actually do (or should do in many cases), and when you are next going to have to vote. Collect these basic details in something simple like a Google Drive Document or text-file. I doesn't have to be fancy and you don't have to do it all right away. You've got a couple years in most cases to get this stuff together.
You can even work together on this. It's not about politics at this point, it's about knowing what's out there. Barring some heavily gerrymandered districts, you probably get to vote on the same things as your neighbours so, if there are any of those you get along with, you can share the investigatory load.
Step 2: Don't Get Surprised
For most elections you'll know the date quite a few months (or years in the case of Presidents) in advance. Put these dates in your calendar and then put another date in your calendar a month before saying "election day is next month" and then, maybe, for particularly complicated ones, you put more "it's coming" dates in earlier (like a deadline to finish Step 1).Once you hit your "warning" day you can think about figuring out who to vote for. Go back to your list and find who is running for the roles you will be voting on. Figure out their track records (if any) and their policies and all that jazz. Then pick who you are going to vote for.
Step 3: Plan to vote
Make sure you are actually going to be able to vote when the time comes. Better yet... plan to visit an early polling station so you have two chances to screw it up instead of just one.
Bonus: Your Extra Votes
You only get one vote for each role but there are other things you can totally do that could impact how other people vote.
Extra Vote 1: Telling people who you are voting for and why. If you are famous they call this "endorsement" but normal people are allowed to do it too. Just knowing what you think might be enough to tip someone onto "your side" of the fence. Unless they hate you, I guess.
Extra Vote 2: Helping people vote. Remind people to vote, help people register and get to polling places, wear your "I voted" button with pride... Google says that only 57% of eligible voters participated in the 2012 mid-terms... that tells me that almost half of all USicans just didn't even bother. Maybe they would have if someone had just been like "Hey, are you planning to vote next month? Need a ride?"
Extra Vote 3: Giving resources. If you actually care about a given role you can totally donate or volunteer for a campaign. There is a lot of "Big Money" in politics right now but grass-roots campaigns still have an impact. Lot's of people hate "Big Money" these days so your support kinda counts double; as actual support and as saying "this guy isn't just about "Big Money"".
Extra Vote 4: Running for office. OK, probably an expensive waste of time but... If an incumbent turd is running unopposed and nobody is stepping up, maybe just run yourself (or find someone to run who you can support). You'll probably lose but every vote you get is a vote he doesn't.
Conclusion
This is all totally basic stuff that you could have figured out yourself if you thought about it. I'm just saying it now so that maybe you will think about it a little bit now and maybe actually be ready the next time you have the opportunity to participate in one of these election things.
