The Voting Booth looks bigger on TV

The election on television was much different than my election day. Living in a relatively ‘safe’ district, the money and the media mostly concentrated on races outside my district as well as the governor’s race.

For the past year my television set has been bombarded with political ads. At first, they were pretty tame and far and few between. Bruce Rauner had gotten into the advertising game pretty early. As time went on however, the ads became more frequent and more nasty.

If the goal of the midterm election was to ensure that I didn't like any elected officials, then count this as the first bipartisan victory in a long time. I didn’t vote this time around because I was inspired by a candidate, I was voting out of pure civic duty. I was never asked to vote *for* somebody this time around, but rather vote against the other person.

With the exception of the race for Illinois governor, there were also very few ads that portrayed candidates I could actually vote for. Senator Durbin was up for re-election, but there weren't that many ads compared to the sheer tsunami of ads for the Brett Schneider VS Bob Dold race. (That race was for the Illinois 10th district whereas I live in the 5th.)

So, as I entered the voting booth on Tuesday… most of the races I had been hearing about weren't actually on my ballot. This is the part where my party affiliation (Democrat ever since the Iraq War), comes in handy. If it had a D, I voted yes. Of course, many of the races in my precinct were uncontested — including races in which I would have voted for somebody else. It seems the election on television was an entirely different election than that one I was actually participating in. The information I received during the campaign was very little use in actually voting.

If not for Dan Sinker’s excellent MobileJudges site — I would have had no clue about the judicial races. The mobile app lets you look at a list of judges that have been reviewed by the Committee to Elect Qualified Judges. In looking at the site, I saw that there were only two that weren't recommended in a rather long list of judges. I marked those ‘no’ and quickly began to fill in the others.

During this time, a father who was voting next to me had brought his son along. The whole time he’s going “Color! Color! Color!” and wanting to color on the ballot.

The Chicago Board of Elections uses these ‘arrow’ ballots. The way they work is that every candidate has broken arrow next to their name. To vote for the candidate, you put a line to complete in their arrow. I completely understand how he thought we were coloring. I ended up screwing up one of the judges because I had been crossing the ‘yes’ line almost robotically and ended up over-voting. (Filling in both yes and no.) This ended up causing some awkwardness when I went to run my ballot through the machine. (I opted to just have that race not count rather than to redo the whole ballot.)

I also wasn't aware that there were this many referendums on the agenda until I stepped into the booth. Now, when you read these you could tell that these were written by lawyers. I understood them to a point — having a Master’s degree in Public Administration. However, the referendums were not written in plain language at all. Having no prior knowledge of what the questions were was also an issue. The only one I was aware of beforehand was the Crime Victims Bill of Rights (the one with the Kelsey Grammer ad). Of course, only the first two referendum questions had any real effect as they were constitutional amendments. The other ten questions are so were non-binding resolutions. The person that had the actual ability to propose laws and vote on these issues was running unopposed.

I left my polling place feeling entirely underwhelmed having really only voted in one race that wasn't already decided ahead of time. Because most of my races were virtually uncontested — my vote wasn’t really going to be a game changer. This isn't the only time I'd done this — the Presidential election was pretty much the same way. (Being Illinois, our electoral votes were always going to go with our hometown candidate.) The difference is that in that election I had been *asked* to vote *for* the President whereas this round I was asked for money and to vote against others.

After work, I turned on the television where I was once again greeted by a much bigger election. The TV was all about the control of the Senate and talking mostly about people who weren't on my ballot. This continued until the race for Governor was called. (After which I stopped watching.)

From watching the news the next day, you'd think that not a single Democrat won any race. However, on my ballot there were only two Republican winners. (Rauner and Judy Barr Topinka) Even in the aftermath, the election looks bigger on television.

There was a lot of information about the election being talked about in the news media about the election — but very little of it pertained to my actual ballot. I imagine that this experience is matched by a lot of voters living in ‘safe districts’ and where a big chunk of the ballot is unopposed. Despite the massive amount of effort news organizations did covering the results of the election, I felt very much like an uninformed voter given the information mismatch. And I have a degree in Political Science! I know the issues! I know how the system works! However, other than the ‘big ticket’ races — for the most part I didn't see any news coverage about any of the ‘down ballot races. Now, I know the Chicago Tribune does ‘endorsements’ on all races — but that’s an opinion ppiece I want something a little more fact based.

When I was in undergrad, I lived (and voted) in a small town. The newspaper would interview all the candidates. And I would read it, and when I went to vote I would know who everyone was. I realize that it’s easier to do in a small town — but given all the staff time and money we spend making fancy election scoreboards I just think there’s some way to shift that around a bit.

Of course, when we use our technological prowess to divide the electorate up so precisely — we end up making our elections more like math problems. Final Exam: Create an electoral boundary with X, Y, and Z. On TV, it looks like the election has a variety of viewpoints and beliefs. On TV, it looks as if we’re debating issues in the public square and that it doesn’t matter that the districts have been drawn in such as way to make races less interesting. In reality, the election is much bigger on TV.