Tuesday is Election Day — get out and vote

Tuesday is the Primary Election. In that election, our next supervisor will be chosen.

It’s been a heated race and it’s good. While there has been negatively, I think some heat is good, because the flip side is complacency. Elected officials need to be held accountable and kept in the game.

I know when I get complacent in my own life, such as with finances or health, things slip until something happens to get me to rein it all in.

I also believe that our elected officials should be a diverse group. Not artifically diverse, but diverse enough to represent the different people living in our community. Different ages, races (as diverse as we can be here race-wise), career-wise and position-wise. That can often be difficult because many of our local boards pay nothing to very little (city council members get a $300 per month stipend and Atascadero school board members don’t get any) but require many hours of service between meetings and public events.

So in the end, be sure to get to the polls Tuesday between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. and cast your vote.

Your vote matters.

If you are registered to vote by mail and haven’t returned your ballot yet, you can drop it off at the polls.

Before you go, however, be sure to do your homework. Read your sample ballot, do some research online to find out the positions of each candidate, proposition and measure. It can be daunting, so perhaps only stick with those that you think are the most important. You don’t have to vote for everything and I don’t encourage you to vote for things you don’t understand or have any knowledge of.

I don’t vote for every office or every proposition. And I think it’s a problem that people vote on things they don’t actually have any idea about.

I also don’t support people voting party line. Every person is different and not everyone can fit into one label, so you’re not necessarily going to agree with everything the party you identify with supports.

Just be sure to vote!

For the complete article see the 06-01-2012 issue.

Click here to purchase an electronic version of the 06-01-2012 paper.