Let me say that I thought I was pretty well informed about voting and such but I didn't know all the judges on the ballot. I was well informed pretty much on all the amendments but you would think that with all the $$$ spent on the presidential campaign that there would be more money spent advertising about the judges and amendments. I heard an election official tell someone that they didn't have to vote on the judges if they didn't know about them! I didn't know much about 1 of the amendments. I wonder how many voters out there are less informed than I and how many just didn't know how to vote on the issues? Kinda scary but more airtime needs to be spent on educating people on the pros and cons of the amendments and judges IMHO
The Baton Rouge paper printed a sample ballot the last two days which looked exactly like the touch panel in the voting booths. It allowed those who read the paper to take their time and decide on the issues ahead of time. It would literally have taken 10 minutes to read every amendment in the booth.
Like I said, I voted absentee 2 weeks ago and at that point I had only seen an ad for one Supreme Court judge here in MS. They didn't start running ads until the last week and a half. You would think local newspapers and tv stations would do a better job informing people as a public service, but I guess that would take away from the money the candidates are forced to spend on advertising. I voted for the judge I saw the ad for (who is already on the court) and a guy I had heard of because he is the head of the MS Supreme Court. I couldn't think of anything they had screwed up really bad, so I figured just as well to stick with them. Also here in MS there has been much confusion in the way the gay marriage ammendment was written. If you don't pay attention, you might vote yes if you favored gay marriage and no if you were against it, but it was just the opposite. The last 2 or 3 days people have been running around trying to explain what it means. I agree there should be much more information put out there to help voters.
