There are a lot of nuts in politics these days.
Like this one: In the 2018 primary election, only 16% of Yakima County residents actually voted–that’s nuts!
That means 16% of people are making our decisions for us. You can bet your last acorn that those 16% don’t represent the entirety of Yakima’s ethnically and socioeconomically diverse population.
Do you want someone else deciding your future? Deciding what you can and cannot do? Deciding whether or not you can dance whenever you feel like it, specifically at high school dance functions (I’m looking at you, Dennis Quaid’s character in the remake of Footloose….)?
We certainly don’t. That’s why Field Group recently launched a voting awareness campaign.
It only takes three minutes (yeah, 3) to register to vote online. That’s less time than it took to come up with the tagline for our voting awareness campaign–which just so happens to be “Take 3 Minutes” (seems obvious now, like it maybe shouldn’t have taken that long to come up with it…).
You can learn more about voting on our Take 3 Minutes website: http://take3minutes.org/. Or, if you want to skip straight to getting registered, head to Washington’s voter registration page: https://register.vote.org/?state=Washington.
Ok, I’m registered. Now what?
Once you’re registered to vote, they (whoever “they” is–we assume it’s a bunch of squirrels wearing fancy hats) will literally mail a ballot directly to your home. All you have to do then is fill in the little rectangles next to the person/issue you want to vote for and mail it back. You don’t even need a stamp anymore (the fancy-hat-wearing squirrels are apparently in cahoots with the post office). How easy is that?
We know what you’re thinking: “How do I know whom or what to vote for? I don’t understand all the voting mumbo-jumbo on the ballot, and I sure as heck don’t got time to read that entire voter’s book. I also just started a free trial of Hulu Plus with no commercials, so I don’t even have TV ads to tell me what to think!”
Great news! There are websites that summarize political candidates and issues, so you can easily figure out what to vote for. No matter what your political leanings, there is a site for you:
- 2018 Voters Pamphlet: https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/research/2018-voters-pamphlet.aspx
- Heritage Action for America: https://heritageaction.com/
- Progressive Voters Guide: https://progressivevotersguide.com/
- Washington Voter: http://www.washingtonvoter.org/
- Yakima County Republicans: http://www.yakimacountyrepublicans.com/
Notice how we gave you a whole bunch of options for political parties? That’s because every voice matters–not just the ones we agree with. Living in a democracy such as ours means that all opinions are valid and deserve to be heard.
So, if you’re not already registered to vote, do it now. It takes three minutes or less. Then research the candidates and issues, and vote!
See you at the polls! Err…mailbox? (Explaining jokes makes them funnier, so we’re going to explain that last joke: They used to have “polls” where they made you stand in line forever and then you stood some more in this little box and used this big fancy hole puncher to vote. But now it’s all mail-in ballots. So we won’t actually see you at the polls because we don’t have polls anymore. Instead, you’ll put your ballot in a mailbox. We also won’t see you at your mailbox, though, because that would be weird.)
