I am grateful that the three people in my household are all registered voters.

However, does my household need to receive THREE voter guides. Three 80 page guides.

While I get that everyone should be respected as an individual, and therefore should receive their own guide…is it ecologically responsible to print out these guides and send us three separate ones? Is it economically feasible to spend the money printing and mailing them?

Is my daughter, who put in for an absentee ballot going to now receive a voter guide at her temporary address?

Does anyone actually read the Voter Guides?

Isn’t this something that should be available online only? Or is there some sort of prejudice to that?

Can I vote for no more money spent on mailing me anything political?

I would be eternally grateful to any politico who can stop the madness.

83 thoughts on “Gratitude Saturday: October 16”

  1. An 80-page voting guide????!! OMG. Unless it’s because it’s in at least 40 languages so as not to exclude anyone, that’s a message that says “It’s really too complicated to vote. Just stay home.” Our most recent voting guide (in Canada) managed to provide the voting station locations, the dates and times, ID required and the COVID restrictions, in two languages, on 5 1/2” x 8 1/2” mail-out cards.

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    1. I’m not at home, and I think I recycled it already, but as far as I could tell it was English and Spanish. There’s got to be a better way. It’s a mayoral election for us, and if half the registered voters vote I’ll be shocked. And thats with a guide. Do people actually read these things?

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  2. That does seem redundant, but you know things like that are typically addressed and mailed in bulk without much human oversight… Perhaps it’s up to the individual county election systems? When married, we received only one, even with multiple voters. I do read the guide, not for the general where to mail my ballot stuff but as insight into candidates, and the size is often based on what type of election is happening. Here, our mid-term race is huge and we have one guide for all the cities in my county so it’s BIG. Online only…what about those without reliable equipment or internet access? So yes, online would not be equitable for all.

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      1. It’s been a huge issue with Covid and education. We have lots of rural areas, school districts scramble to supply laptops but then stories of families driving 1 hour+ just to find someplace to connect. Just like your post on big city life without cars…rural life without a solid infrastructure to be connected. Makes voting for the right government all the more needed.

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  3. Wow! That’s one large other guide.
    We just get pamphlet after pamphlet from the same two or three candidates during election time, sometimes
    3-4 of the same one daily 🙄. It makes me angry because I am a very conscientious recycler and work hard at not using paper, bags, etc., than these dumbos who, tout climate change, garbage up my mailbox. Another case of not for me but for thee, when it comes to planet saving changes! Wow, sorry for the rant!!

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  5. I do read the voter guide. And while it may seem wasteful and annoying to receive 3 copies in 1 household, it’s necessary. Envision a household in which voters disagree wildly on election issues. Ostensibly one voter could refuse to share the voting guide. Sound unlikely? Not really. But then, I’ve witnessed a Christmas dinner where people nearly came to blows over a political discussion. And this lovely scene predated our current polarized times!

    When there is a systematic effort to abridge voting rights, it’s more essential than ever to receive and read the voter guide. The voter guide is different from political mailings. Those I send straight to the recycle bin.

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      1. Perhaps this says more about how and why people vote, how informed they want to be versus voting along party lines or for who has the most signs/tv ads and not so much about waste and extraneous paper filling recycle bins?

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    2. You know, I thought no one reads these things, but I stand corrected. In fact, if I think long and hard, I believe certain family might read at least a big portion of such a document (I’m Canadian, but we get similar mail)… So, thanks for saying so.

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  6. It’s not like that everywhere LA. I DONT get a giant packet sent to me. I’ve been getting my mail in ballot for the last several years . I do check every year that I’m still registered just to make sure I still will be receiving everything by mail. But I don’t get a manuscript in the mail to read. I can go online if I want other information sent in various languages . It does seem like a waste of paper to send out 80 pages to everyone. What also seems like a waste are all the ads sent but that’s by individual candidate. And it depends on the budgets of candidates.

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  7. There was a referendum question on my ballot that asked for a paragraph to be removed but gave zero reference to what the point was. I had to Google it and found that in the 90’s English became the official language of my city from a clause written by racist member of city council, prior to that the city was always diverse and no language was deemed “official”. I hate the underhanded way of not informing the voter what they are voting for, in my case a guide would’ve been great.

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  14. Yeah that would be frustrating to get 3 80 page guides—someone smarter than me must be able to find a way to manage that. Just more recycling to manage—-that is what I think when I see more than one version of the phone book arrive at my door.
    Our garbage rules are really restrictive—even if I was tempted to put some stuff in the trash—you have to pay extra if you have extra garbage beyond a certain amount—while I can recycle for free.
    Are the 80 page guides a function of NYC being so large–or could they be made smaller?

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    1. I’m away for the weekend, but if I haven’t recycled it yet, I’m going to look to see what was so important. I do know that one side is Spanish and one side english

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  15. Unless I’m completely oblivious, we don’t get anything like that at all. I’d think if it were of any significant size, I would have noticed it and been irritated to no end. These kinds of things need to be available online, at libraries and government offices that the public accesses like the DMV.

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  16. Yes, we have three voters in our household too and get multiple copies of the same thing but not all are complete versions. Usually I keep one and recycle the rest. I think there should be a place where you can register your language preferences so you don’t get things in Chinese or Spanish. That alone would save some money/trees.

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  17. We dont get voter guides in wisconsin. Thank god! This is what I am geateful for today. And who has time to read it. Can’t they put it online for the people (person) that wants to read it?

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    1. If the world we’ve come to rests n housemates not sharing a guide, I’d say that as a society, we are beyond redemption. Technically, we could also say that roommates might not give each other their mail, or steal things sent to them. I think, as with everything else, people should be able to opt out of receiving election literature. My daughter registered last year…this should be a standard question when registering now. When I go to vote, when I go to the person holding the rolls, there should be a way I can opt out. I know that most people in my building didn’t even bring these guides to their apartment nor recycle them, because I saw a garbage can full of them next to our mail boxes. There has to be a better way

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      1. I guess I like to study my election guide. Granted, ours are a good deal smaller than yours. I email candidates and ask questions. Most respond. I think the founding fathers worried about an uninformed population—and until everyone has equal access to internet I’m not sure how we impart the information to every voter.

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      2. Newspapers. Library. Town hall. Post office. Community center. Supermarket. Any physical location that serves a diverse populace can have a bulletin board with info. If someone is not willing to do these things I’ll bet they won’t read a guide mailed to them. I’ll go one further, if they don’t read a newspaper or do stuff I’m betting they’re not even registered to vote

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      6. I’m going to segue to what I think is the larger issue. My friend was a stay at home dad for 15 years. He recently reentered the work force. He is a middle class lawyer with a home computer. He is struggling right now because he’s so behind in technology. I hate tech and reliance on the internet etc however, the thing that pandemic showed us is that those with reliable internet or computers are going to be woefully behind everyone else. The first thing anyone should be doing is bridging the gap between those who have internet and those who don’t. Children growing up without access are going to lack critical skills when it comes to doing most jobs, both white and blue collar. The haves and have nots gap will only widen with time. That must be fixed if we want everyone to be on equal footing because right now the playing field is uneven

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      13. They don’t have a bulletin board where this info is posted? Add to this, if this is what they believe, is a voter guide changing that? Plus…my voter guide didn’t say anything about covid. Or the candidates. Or the issues. It contained nothing if import except where to vote. It’s an off year election where the only thing in play is mayor. And that’s going to go strictly party lines. Everyone else is running unopposed as democrats

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      14. Again, our voter guide is very small. It doesn’t take days to read—maybe half an hour. And seems like we’re talking about very different types of guides. Ours, in addition to giving polling information, offer a complete listing of all the candidates and their stances on issues in the county, as well as information on any amendments that will be on the ballot.

        Your voting guide probably could be stripped down—one per household since everyone would vote in the same location.

        I think we’re talking apples and kumquats. My apologies for thinking they were the same.

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      15. You are an optimist. You see things and think people will change. I’m more, let’s say, pragmatic. When I hear people say things or do thing I immediately find the hypocrisy. I see a group of people spouting how green they are doing things that reek of fiscal and environmental waste. We got rid of plastic bags. Now people buy new reusable bags and throw them away. We hand out masks and people throw them on the ground, often unused.

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      16. I do tend to be an optimist. It makes me sad when I seen trash on the roadside, but I know that it’s a small number of people who engage in that type of thing. At least in my neck of the woods.

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      1. The pandemic revealed discrepancies in access and in many ways helped broaden coverage in rural and less affluent areas. It’s still not 100% though. We’ve got families in my county who still aren’t able to access the internet at home.

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      2. I know. I feel for those kids promoted to the next grade without the skills they need to build on. Can you imagine doing geometry without having had a good year of algebra?

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      4. My daughter volunteered and online tutored a second and third grader from April 2020 till June 2021. But she’s still sad about kids she couldn’t help

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  22. When I lived in that bass akward god awful red state of TN I missed so much my printed voting guide. In fact, it was so bad there that I also missed getting cards in the mail from the political party under which I registered that had guidance on who they wanted me to vote for. In some ways it provided a starting point for me to study the guide and other available material possibly even from more modern sources to see if I agreed with them or not.

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