Just stay home
Normally this is where I’d encourage you to go make your voice heard and head to the polls, but jeez, why bother? In the Arlington area where I live, at least, the ballot is almost 50% uncontested seats. The only sections up for grabs are Sheriff and County Board, two slots I don’t have any strong opinion about. I’m not sure I’m even comfortable with the fact that Sheriff is an elected position - enforcing the law should be non-denominational, in my opinion.
If you’re in my area and strongly partisan, I’d advise you to print out the ballot from the above link. The evil electronic vote-eating machine we Arlingtonites use doesn’t identify party affiliation for County Board or Clerk.
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"The evil electronic vote-eating machine we Arlingtonites use doesn’t identify party affiliation for County Board or Clerk"
neither does the one in Fairfax County as I learned this mornnig.
County Board is the most important local office in Arlington and one that you should care about — they will be making huge decisions about public transit, road transportation, parks, immigration, taxes, and much more. WaPo’s analysis is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/26/AR2007102602338_pf.html
All I know is that I can’t vote for Tejada: he was part of the council cartel who decided to eschew the fully-funded baseball stadium.
The guy running against Beth Arthur for sheriff is the son of my neighbor with the shitty yard. Nice kid, that Steve Strasburg but I don’t know that he has the experience I want in the head of the county’s law enforcement.
It is a shame that Sheriff is an elected post. I want someone showing up to help me regardless of my politics.
If the Sheriff wasn’t an elected position, the other option would be that it would be an appointed one… meaning it would be appointed by, yep, elected politicians.
There is something significant about the Arlington ballot and that is that longtime Board member Paul Ferguson is leaving to run for Clerk of Courts (why that is elected I have no idea). Tejada will almost definitely hold his seat, but there will be a new board member elected today. There isn’t much turnover in the board so it is a pretty big deal to us Arlingtonians.