> For local elections, I have to frantically google on the day my ballot is due to figure out how to vote for.
what on earth??
practically every metropolitan area and tons of smaller communities have multiple news sources that publish "voting guides" in addition to voter pamphlets that go out before elections which detail candidates positions, ballot initiatives etc.
barring that you can also just... do your "frantic googling" before the election. it's not a waste of your time to put a little of it toward understanding the political climate of your area and maybe once in a while forming an opinion instead of whatever constitutes a "moderate" position during the largest rightward shift of the overton window in decades.
With the added bonus that a llm might not even be updated to the last developments of what happened politically and have outdated views or might not know about the candidate well enough to provide accurate info (or at least, more accurate than any voting phamplets or guides)
It isn’t that simple. You have a few top elections that are in the media enough to be very visible. Then you have…judges…school board members…port members…people who you want to choose carefully on but are completely missing from voter guides.
honest question, because i've only ever lived places that issue voter guides: do you live somewhere that doesn't have government-issued voter guides containing at least some information on all the candidates/ballot initiatives/etc? maybe i'm taking that for granted.
We have a voter guide, I don't really find it useful because people generally present themselves in the best light. This morning I had to fill out a ballot with 5 school board races (no idea why we have to vote for each one) and none of those were easy. For the top line elections, I knew what to do, for the lower line elections...I often just left entries empty because I didn't have time to figure out why I would prefer one candidate or the other.
without knowing whether you live in a tiny community (guessing no, since you mentioned port commissioners), i'd highly recommend you look into local news (including alternative news sources - if you really hate their political slant, you know you can always just vote against whatever they recommend). you'll get way more helpful information than anything an LLM can put together.
I follow local news for a big city in the PNW. No. Port commissioners and school board members never make the news here, city council members barely do either but at least they are more visible.
what on earth??
practically every metropolitan area and tons of smaller communities have multiple news sources that publish "voting guides" in addition to voter pamphlets that go out before elections which detail candidates positions, ballot initiatives etc.
barring that you can also just... do your "frantic googling" before the election. it's not a waste of your time to put a little of it toward understanding the political climate of your area and maybe once in a while forming an opinion instead of whatever constitutes a "moderate" position during the largest rightward shift of the overton window in decades.