‘Voting and Elections’ Archives
Who Votes, Who Doesn’t and Why?
ARTICLE #5 IN A SERIES OF ARTICLES ABOUT THE 2022 MIDTERM ELECTIONS, BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS MINNEAPOLIS. Recent Supreme Court rulings have exposed the reality that government representatives often don’t act in accordance with the will of the people. Polls indicate, for example, that Americans support access to abortion, yet the highest court in the land rescinded that right. So why the disconnect? It’s about voting – who votes, who doesn’t and why. Among the pool of all eligible voters in the U.S., approximately 1 out of 3 did NOT vote in the 2020 Presidential election. The top reasons that these 77 million Americans did not vote were 1) lack of interest in politics 2) they didn’t like the candidates and 3) they didn’t think their votes would matter. Those least likely to vote were under 34, Hispanic, less educated, unmarried and with lower incomes. Difficulty of voting was not identified as a major reason for not voting, but we know there are [...]
Primary Election Day is Tuesday, August 9!
Find out where you vote and what’s on your ballot by visiting mnvotes.org Remember, your polling place may have changed because of redistricting. About Primary Elections WHAT IS A PRIMARY ELECTION? A primary election determines which candidates will be on the ballot in the November general election. For example, five candidates from one political party might run for governor. Only one candidate can be on the ballot in November. The winner of the August primary election will represent their party on the November election ballot. There may be two kinds of offices on your primary ballot: partisan offices and nonpartisan offices. PARTISAN OFFICES Partisan offices will list a political party next to a candidate’s name on the ballot. All state and federal offices—such as U.S. representatives or Minnesota senators—are partisan offices. Partisan candidates will be listed in four columns on the front side of the primary ballot. The columns list candidates from [...]
WE’VE CAST OUR BALLOTS, THEN WHAT?
Article #4 in a series of articles about the 2022 Midterm Elections, brought to you by the League of Women Voters Minneapolis. We’ve thought hard about the candidates and slipped our ballots into the voting machine on election day. We’ve done our part. Now it’s up to others to make sure our votes are safe. The first persons we encounter at the polls are the election judges, there to help us through the voting process – from registering and verifying eligibility to actually depositing the ballots. They are usually citizens from the neighborhood, chosen based on their experience and sometimes language skills. Judges are affiliated with a variety of major parties, or they may be unaffiliated. Certain tasks at the polls need to be performed by two people of different parties. All judges receive specific training to do their jobs and are sworn in to be impartial. When voting at the polls ends at 8 pm on election night, the election judges at each of Minneapolis’ [...]
