Everyone looks at Washington, so state and local governments often operate with no public oversight. It can be a complete shitshow of incompetence and corruption, and nobody notices until the lights start going out, the water is poisonous, the pension fund goes bankrupt (because it was looted), etc.
Last presidential election, there was like a 45% voter turnout in our county. It was historic, and they even ran out of ballots in a couple of places during the primary.
In the most recent mid-term elections for things like Mayor, road commissioner and county council, the turnout was 8%.
8% of people decided who would do things that ACTUALLY impact the day-to-day life around here. Wonder why only the rich neighborhoods get their streets fixed? BECAUSE THE ELDERLY AND WEALTHY PEOPLE THERE VOTE. Wonder why they're spending an unbelievable amount fixing an out-of-date lake/riverfront to be prettier? BECAUSE THE OLD PEOPLE THERE VOTE IN LOCAL ELECTIONS.
As somebody who has tried really really hard to understand enough local politics so that I even know who I'm voting for, it's really really hard. Not only is there a lack of good information sources, it takes a ton of time to understand the issues and what each of these offices does.
And if there's one thing that the elderly and the wealthy have more of than the rest of us, it's time. Time to call up city offices when things are not to one's liking, time to figure out the org charts and bureaucratic relationships, and time to get your neighbors riled up.
I agree. During my last local election I sat down with the mail ballot and attempted to find information on all of the candidates. For 90% of these candidates, at best I would end up on a Facebook page with one paragraph describing their position. At worst I couldn't find anything that told me who they even were. I had to guess as to which "John Doe" was the person actually running.
The old + wealthy people who vote in those elections don't worry about perfection, they just vote the old + wealthy slate and look for the odd dog whistle.
If you skim the positions and get an 80% hit rate on policies which actually match yours (which means you screw it up and guess wrong 20% of the time) that is still way better than not participating at all.
The best information source I've found is to go to join local political advocacy groups, where a lot of information (and misinformation) spreads about candidates, what they've done in the past, and their likely views on future matters.
This takes a toooooon more time than looking up people once you have a ballot. But I'm the other hand, voting isn't such a huge thing for controlling local political outcomes.
The local officials have a similar lack of information about what voters want. So they tend to be easily influenced by a small number of highly motivated people that show up to meetings. In a town or 50,000, if 100 people show up to a meeting and there's no significant opposition, it's quite likely that the 100 people will win, even if they don't represent the community. Because with the small amount of effort that it took to get 100 people to show to a meeting will go much further come election time, and that 100 people who bothered to show up will remember a vote that went against them when they were the only people that showed up for public input.
IMHO, this is hugely un democratic, and a source of many problems. But it's how politics work: connections and organizing, instead of a poll of everybody's opinion on every issue.
I've found it terribly hard to find out when and where local elections are held. Yes - the local county website has this information. But that's only useful if you already _know_ there is an election upcoming. If you don't know, you don't know to go check either.
Local communication has completely broken down. Few, if anyone, watches local TV, listens to local radio (if they haven't been replaced by Sinclair et. al) , subscribes local newspapers (if they exist). I'm not so upset at people, because they have no avenue to learn this information except word of mouth.
National politics at least has enough money to pay for ad spots. Local campaigns rarely can afford such measures.
