Election day

I've always exercised my right to vote when I've been in the country and even a few times by absentee ballot.  Now that I've moved to different state I have to learn a new set of issues and names.  The three-way race for governor has been well covered by the media in part because there is no incumbent.  Things get a little more complicated when it comes to county commissioner, supervisor for soil and water conservation or school board director.  (Where I'm from they are called "members" not "directors".)  Growing up in a sparsely populated farm county I could pretty much rely on name recognition/reputation for local elections in addition to the coverage given to each candidate in the weekly local paper.  That doesn't work so well since I'm new in the city and I don't know very many people.  Actually I doubt name recognition works for anyone here with an additional 1,134,544 people in the county.

My Saturday afternoon plans fell through so I decided to see what Google could tell me about the election.  I found the ballot and worked my way through it.  I was amazed to find that some of the candidates had no presence on the web.  In fact some of the candidates for State senator and Sate representative didn't have anything stating their views on the issues.  If they can't even do something as basic as posting a bit about themselves and what they hope to accomplish, I can't imagine them being a very conscientious elected official.  The same thing is true of some of those running for county office.  Some of the candidates for soil and water conservation supervisor didn't even bother filling out a simple questionnaire that would be posted on another web site.  I still feel like I haven't a clue on most of the issues, but if there is no web presence, there is little chance of getting my vote on Tuesday.