I don't know if I'm just embarrassingly late to the game or if this is a new feature, but if you Google "sample ballot" it will give you a field to type in your location, and after you enter that it will list the positions and referenda that will be on your location's next ballot. Clicking on each of them will expand a list of candidates/questions, and clicking on those will fire a Google search on each. This makes life soooo much easier than in the past, where it was a whole ordeal in itself just to find an accurate, timely list of the people and things you're about to vote on (assuming that Google's results are accurate). My town's election page looks like it was designed by a twelve year old in 1997; good luck finding anything timely or relevant there. And the Byzantine state page takes about a dozen clicks to finally get to a 32-page PDF list of candidates with no referenda. Google steps in and makes things easy where governments are still lagging behind!
Holy smokes. For me it brings up delegates to the Imperial Senate. I think I'll be going with Vixur Minn and Thalia Solusar.
Huh. Californians get sample ballots months ahead of time, along with a form to request a mail-in ballot if you want. Good thing, too, given how many idiot propositions we have to wade through every year.
I got a[n incomplete] sample ballot in the mail a couple years ago, too, along with a list with my name and some of my neighbors' names and which previous elections we had voted in within the past few years. I think it was a way to try to shame us into voting (and not a very fair one, as at least one of those neighbors with an empty-looking record had only moved to the state a few months prior) and was pretty distasteful.
In Washington we get mailed a voter pamphlet about a week before the ballots get mailed out. For elected positions there is candidate information and statements. For Initiatives and Referenda there is a statement of what it does, a fiscal statement of the impacts of it, and statements both for and against. https://wei.sos.wa.gov/agency/osos/EN/Pages/OnlineVotersGuide.aspx That's just statewide stuff. Unfortunately King County Elections builds you a 'custom' online voter pamphlet when you put in your information so I can't show that.
We have access to this through the state's byzantine website. Google does it better, but unfortunately, I feel compelled to check the "official" ballot just the same.
Now if only there were candidates worth voting for. I'm going to be leaving half my ballot blank because CA disallows write-ins in party-nominated offices. Such bullshit, that. As for the issues, what a minefield.
Our county's supervisor of elections website has had this feature for years plus we get sample ballots mailed to us.Sorry to see that there are still counties in the U.S that hasn't discovered the wonders of the internet.
