Montana’s primary elections are coming up quick, June 7, a bit after Memorial Day. I hope the timing helps us remember those who made it possible. Our right and duty to wisely choose our leaders is a great and shockingly rare gift, paid for with too much blood and suffering.
Freedom isn’t easy. Neither is the freedom to vote. Voting is the right of any American citizen. But the wise exercise of any, even all our rights, requires diligence and effort. In Flathead County in particular, especially for Republicans, 2022’s primary will be a tough call. The chattering-class “wisdom” is a Republican blowout in November across the board. I’ve never seen national polls where Republicans run ahead of Democrats in the generic congressional category, but now the GOP is a totally unprecedented seven points up from a past “best” showing of “tied.”
What about locally here in northwest Montana? Well, I went to the county database, got their Excel file, and it seems there’s no local primaries for state-legislative Democrats, while all except one GOP legislative race is contested by up to four hopefuls. Even worse, of six county-wide positions, Flathead Dems found nobody to run a D for county commission, or any other county-wide office. Three of six races have GOP primaries. Many Republican precinct committee races are being contested, none Democrat.
Apparently, every Republican and his or her dog seems to be running this time, fighting in crowded primaries in hopes of pipelining the expected November tidal wave. I’m honestly asking myself, who the heck are these people? Real Republicans? RINOs? Libertarians, big or little? Or, (gasp) closeted Dems?
In “my” races, fortunately, I know who is who (or what) and will vote accordingly. So will a number of crossover Flathead Democrats, you bet. And yep, I’m still reading the letters to the editors pretty carefully and checking out the writers, too.
Probably the most important vote we’ll cast June 7 is in the Supreme Court primary. Unfortunately, it will probably be our worst-informed vote, too. I don’t have the time or energy here to go into depth now about all the reasons I am convinced our judicial races are NINO, nonpartisan-in-name-only, profoundly political and partisan, a private playground for Montana’s ambulance chasers.
What matters right now is there are three candidates challenging two incumbents. The two with the most June votes will move on to November’s ballot. I’ve got an inside line on this one, in that I know the incumbent from my college days, not well, but it was enough to get a read. I also know one of her challengers, primarily because of good legal work he’s done for Montana ag producers. But the other challenger is, and will remain, a complete cipher unless I do the miserable drudgery of vetting the campaign finance reports, the juicy parts of which won’t be filed until AFTER the election.
My most rational-yet-imperfect option is to pick for the ONE person I know, and want, of the three. If you don’t know your choice, I suggest leaving your ballot space blank in the hopes you’ll learn enough to choose wisely in November, if ever.
Gosh, voting smart sure is hard, isn’t it? Yep, and that’s my point. Smart voting, where you actually vote your interests, no matter what those interests may be, is difficult work. And it’s getting harder every election.
What began as the exciting new “Information Age” has degraded into not just the Misinformation Age, the Uninformation Age, and now, the Disinformation Age – but a toxic combination of all three.
Thing is, our loyal political elites are thriving in this toxic brew. They WANT misinformed, uninformed and disinformed voters, the more the better – but not for you.
When college stoners are dragged off the couch at the last possible minute to mark a ballot for the only name remembered after the paid operative processed their registration, a ballot that counts equally to that of someone who studied the issues for months, has never missed an election, and is, above all, impervious to the utter bullflop that passes for “voter information” these days – where’s the real voter suppression?
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May 25, 2022 at 06:02PM
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Don't Vote Stupid - Flathead Beacon
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