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Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome to The Takeaway. This is Melissa Harris-Perry, and thanks for starting your week with us.

[music] Now, early voting has already begun in many places across the country, and within just a few weeks, millions of Americans will have entered the voting booth or opened their mail-in ballot for the 2022 midterms. They'll start filling in circles next to the name of their choice for governor or senator or congressperson. Maybe they'll even help pick their mayor, but then over 30% of those Americans will stop right there.

They'll glance down the rest of the ballot, but that's it. They will choose not to choose for the rest of the offices. Now, maybe these folks believe that offices lower on the ballot aren't important, but it's very likely that many voters simply don't have enough information to make these choices. I remember the first time I voted in New Orleans, I was utterly lost about how to make a responsible choice between the candidates in the Office of Coroner.

Even though voters face making choices with little meaningful information, it turns out that these are the elected offices deciding some of the most important issues impacting our daily lives. From school curriculum to crime statistics, or as legendary speaker of the House, the late Tip O'Neill reminded us.

Tip O'Neill: All politics are local.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All this week, The Takeaway is going to be bringing you our DOWNBALLOT series, focusing on some of the races that shape the backyard of our local politics. Up first this week, Bridget King, Associate Professor of Political Science at Auburn University. Bridget, thanks so much for being with us.

Bridgett King: Thank you for having me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, Let's start with this notion of roll-off voting, voting at the top and then not for the rest of it. Is it about information or about disillusionment: not caring?

Bridgett King: I think it's honestly about a little bit of both. We do vote more often in the US than in other democracies. If you can think about the way people are socialized to participate in K-12, we talk about the presidency, congress, maybe state legislatures and governors, but we spend very little time socializing people to understand the value of and importance of those races at the bottom.

A lot of it is people aren't oriented toward understanding the significance of those elections, why they're important, and why they should care about them. It's also true though, that as you mentioned those often are the races where it's the hardest to find information about. People often walk into a voting booth unsure of not only the importance of those jobs but what it is that the people who are running to serve in those positions value and are going to focus on once elected.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, Professor King, I want to be sure that I'm clear. When you say we vote more often than in other democracies, you don't mean that we have higher turnout, you mean that there are actually more frequent opportunities to go cast a ballot?

Bridgett King: Yes, I meant more frequently.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That frequency, in one way, you might think of it as I always love the language of these are the chronic voters. It sounds like it's almost a condition. The people who show up to vote in every single primary, every single election, but outside of the chronics, it does make it hard for other folks to really understand why each of these is important.

Bridgett King: Yes. Also related to the frequency is the fact that oftentimes local races are held not in even-numbered years, they're held in odd-numbered years. It's also true that in a lot of jurisdictions, local elections aren't held on the first Tuesday in November, where we're conditioned to think about voting. They're often in the summer or in the spring. There's almost an extra additional learning curve, getting attuned to when those local elections are, or special elections for that matter, relative to the larger elections that we're accustomed to participating in the first Tuesday of November.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. I want to take a listen to a caller who offered a different take on this. Let's take a listen.

Betsy: Hi, this is Betsy Diane. Politics here, you get above the local you just can't even get talked to the people. We used to be able to talk to the governor and we can't anymore. Whereas locally, you know they've got the information That's the difference.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I thought that was so interesting. On the one hand, the local races may be harder to get information about your county commissioner, they're not going to be blanketing the airwaves with commercials. On the other hand, as Betsy points out, if you want to go talk to your actual county commissioner, you're going to have a much easier time doing that than getting into the governor's mansion.

Bridgett King: It's true. If you are someone who has the time and energy to reach out to someone locally, you could go to their office. You could use traditional forms of communication, telephone. You could write a letter if you still wanted to or even with the admin of social media, you could send them a message on Twitter or Facebook, or any of those other platforms. I do think in many ways it is, I don't know if easier is the right word, but the accessibility points of local election officials is perhaps easier than getting into communication with, like the caller mentioned, your governor, maybe even your state representative, and particularly people in Congress. I would agree with that.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. I want to take a listen to another caller who may be pointed out why this matters so much.

Laura: This is Laura from San Francisco. We're lucky to have an amazing voter turnout in the city of San Francisco. While we may be reliably and consistently blue, there's still a lack of consensus on everything from development to homelessness, to climate change, to policing when it comes to how we implement policy at a local level.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I thought this was so interesting. Laura's point feels so well taken. Partisanship is much less of a signal at the local level. I'm wondering for a voter who walks in, what are the characteristics that do work? How can you start to tease out, all right, qualifications, capacity, and even the role of the office?

Bridgett King: It's interesting because right, the local people are the people who are closest to you, but oftentimes understanding what it is they do, who they are, and what their partisan or just ideological alignments are, can be challenging, particularly if you're in a community where you don't necessarily have an active newspaper and they're not necessarily having debates or maybe you're in a media market that doesn't have the capacity to devote TV time to focusing on these important races.

What I like to do is download a sample ballot from my local election official website or my state elections website and spend some time doing some research about who the individuals are, what the offices are, and doing my due diligence. To the extent that I can with the resources that are available, so that when I'm going in to cast that vote, I'm at least as formed as I can be relative to the resources that are readily available to me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I so love the point you're like, "I like doing this. On a Saturday afternoon, I'm thinking, what am I going to do? I know I'm going to download my sample ballot." What I'm wondering is for the folks out there who may not be a political nerd Def Con level, like you and I might be and we do have this information asymmetry. I heard you mention how we socialize, how we teach in K-12. I can remember my very first ballot that I cast was as a kindergartner in a fake or staged election. It was for the presidency. Probably really just gauging our parents' partisan identification. I'm interested in ways that in education we might actually start socializing toward how to know what your state rep, your county commissioner, your water and sewer board do.

Bridgett King: Yes, I think a lot of us have similar stories about how we were socialized to vote. I remember learning a song about being president when I was in about second grade. I could probably sing it for you now, but I won't. I think it's interesting. We know there are more local offices than there are state or federal. We spend very little time talking to students about them. Maybe if you're a political science student, you have an opportunity to take half a semester where you talk about local government or maybe you take a full 16 credit hours.

One of the ways to begin thinking about how to better socialize individuals who are eventually going to have to cast a ballot in K-12 is not necessarily making a shark pivot from the things that we traditionally do, but maybe just changing the focus a little. The same way you talk about the presidency, you can also talk about mayors, you can talk about the coroner, you can talk about the importance of thinking about who your sheriff is or who your county prosecutor is.

The same way you have a mock election maybe for president, you could have students do a little research about a local office that they're interested in, but don't know much about. Then have them come and give a little presentation before the class of who the candidates are, what the office is, and why it matters. I don't think it necessarily requires a big shift away from the modes and methods where we talk about these things just to refocusing on the offices and how we present them to people as being important and impactful in their lives.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm wondering if there's also a power asymmetry here. I think specifically, for example, about school boards. While maybe an ordinary voter doesn't know who all these candidates are, exactly how they're different from one another, you know who does? People with an interest in shifting school boards. I think about what happened in Wake County, North Carolina, gosh, maybe 10 years ago now with a decision by a conservative big-money group to really get into those school boards there and the big difference that that made in then local and state politics.

I guess I'm also worried about how this information asymmetry turns into a power asymmetry because those who do understand what these offices do can in fact create choices on the ballot that maybe aren't even what voters themselves would have set up if they had had more information.

Bridgett King: I completely agree. We know participation in midterm elections oftentimes is lower than during presidential election years. When you look at local elections and some of these races, the margins are really tight. They're really small. The person or issue that passes is by a couple of ballots. In many ways, there is a value-add for people who want to be impactful, for people who already have, as you mentioned, the knowledge, the information, and the power to reshape what local politics look like to--

I don't want to say ensure, but to ensure that information gap persists so that, as you mentioned, they can continue to shape politics, perhaps initially at the local level and then working their way up to the state and beyond in offices that might perhaps seem inconsequential. You realize that the vast amount of power that these individuals at the local level can have when shaping what it is not only we voters' experience but also our children and other people that we care about and who are important to us.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Are there solutions- Does mail-in voting make this a little bit less of a problem? I'm imagining your scenario about downloading the sample ballot, is that easier to do if you're voting by mail, for example?

Bridgett King: On the one hand, yes. It would be easier, you would have access to the ballot, but that doesn't necessarily address the information challenges that often present themselves when trying to make decisions about these very important local races. Just like the sample ballot, it would give you more time at home with your ballot on perhaps a Saturday to just sit down and think, but also perhaps discuss with your family, your community, and other people who might be more attuned to what some of these issues are and who the candidates are.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Bridgett King, Associate Professor of Political Science at Auburn University, thank you so much for taking the time today.

Bridgett King: Again, thank you for having me.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: We want to hear more from you about how DOWNBALLOT elections and local politics affect your community. Be sure to give us a call at (877)-869-8253, that's (877)-8-MY-TAKE. When we return, we are going to get you BallotReady. If the information's the problem, you've come to the right place. This is The Takeaway.

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We're continuing with more of our DOWNBALLOT series.

Alex Niemczewski: My name is Alex Niemczewski, I'm the CEO and co-founder of BallotReady.

Melissa Harris-Perry: BallotReady is a non-partisan website where you can access information about all the offices for which you'll need to make a choice on your ballot.

Alex Niemczewski: Most voters are aware of the top-of-the-ticket candidates that are going to be on the ballot, but a lot of voters show up to vote and don't realize that there are all these other offices that will be on their ballot that they can cast votes in, and they also don't realize who the candidates that are running.

Melissa Harris-Perry: While talking to Alex, I took a little visit to BallotReady. Okay, so I'm going to do that right now while we're talking, I'm going on my computer here to ballotready.org. I've put in my address and sure enough, it's telling me-- I live in North Carolina so it's telling me my candidates at the level of Senate, Representative, local and judicial, and whew, there are a lot of judicial seats associated with my address.

There is a Supreme Court Associate Justice in C3 and one in C5, there's an appellate court judge in 10 and 11. Oh my goodness. There's an appeals court also in eight and nine. There is a lot here. When I click now, what I'm getting is who the candidates are and information, and what does it mean to be ballot-ready?

Alex Niemczewski: Being ballot-ready means being ready to vote on all the offices on your ballot and feel confident about the votes that you're casting.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Sometimes in political science, we call this melting. Folks will come in and they'll vote at the top. In a midterm, maybe they'll vote for the Senate race, the Gubernatorial race, maybe even the House race. But then you can see literally in the number of votes cast the melt off, how many people just felt like, "Oh, I can't make a decision."

Alex Niemczewski: We know that about 30% of people don't complete their ballots, but also we know that a lot of people guess, and if you talk to voters, many will say, "Oh yes, I wasn't sure about who to vote for all these judges on my ballot." We've also seen research that shows people guess based on the candidate names, gender, ethnicity, and sometimes even the order; the position that they are on the ballot. There's research that shows that candidates who are listed first on the ballot can receive up to a 5% increase in votes. We know voters are not as prepared as they could be when they go to vote.

Melissa Harris-Perry: In fact, I understand that part of your interest in this issue comes from a personal experience. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Alex Niemczewski: In 2014, I was set to vote in those midterms, but I saw my ballot ahead of time, and I saw there were 92 races on my ballot. I knew who I was going to vote for at the top of the ticket, but through all these offices, I didn't even really understand what they do. Like water reclamation commissioner, I hadn't even heard of that before, let alone I didn't know who the candidates were. I felt frustrated. I knew my vote was powerful, and I wanted to be able to confidently vote in all these races.

I made a website just for myself to keep track of what the candidates were saying, who was endorsing them, and their stances on issues. When I talked to people about this, it turned out this was not only a problem that I had, basically, everyone I talked to about it was like, "Oh, yes, I don't know who to vote for." I even talked to the mayor of a certain very large city who admitted to guessing when he voted. I talked to political science professors who didn't know who to vote for in local elections, but it's a lot of information. It is understandable that I'm not the only one who has faced this problem.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Alex, I love that you are making this point because I will say I'm a political science professor, but when I moved to a new city when I moved from New Jersey to New Orleans was the first time I went into a voting booth and discovered a coroner on my ballot. I was like," Okay, now I don't know how to make a decision about this one." I so appreciate this because isn't a shortcoming of the voter, it isn't that you just weren't smart enough or you weren't paying close enough attention. It's actually really hard. Talk to me about how BallotReady is helping to make it a little bit easier for voters.

Alex Niemczewski: When you go to ballotready.org, all you have to do is type in your address and we show you all the offices that will be on your ballot information about what the office actually does and has the power to do, and information about all the candidates running that includes who endorses them, their stances on issues. We also show information about how to vote, because especially in the last few years, there's more voting by mail, more people have moved and so we try to make it easy for voters to not just understand what will be the candidates and referendum and ballot questions that will be on their ballot, but also how to vote so it's really easy.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm going to do that right now while we're talking. I'm going on my computer here to ballotready.org. I've put in my address and sure enough, it's telling me-- I live in North Carolina. It's telling me my candidates at the level of the senate, representative, local and judicial, and whew, there are a lot of judicial seats associated with my address. There is a Supreme Court Associate Justice in C3 and one in C5, there's an appellate court judge in 10 and 11. Oh my goodness, there's an appeals court also in eight and nine. There's a lot here.

When I click, now what I'm getting is who the candidates are and information. Here's what I also find interesting. It says, "Do you have more info on this candidate? Submit it here." Help me understand what that submit information is.

Alex Niemczewski: We've seen that sometimes candidates aren't as forthcoming about their stances on issues as voters want them to be and frankly, they're not as forthcoming as they should be in an informed democracy. What we've seen is when we put that on the site, sometimes candidates will give us more information, and they'll make more stances known because they know more voters are seeing it.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. How do you all vet that information? I can't just go in there and be like, "Julie or Carolyn, they're nice. I know, because they help me out at my grocery store." [laughs]

Alex Niemczewski: Exactly. Oh, everything on our site is linked to its source. If you're going to submit more information, we require that you have a source for it and we verify that source.

Melissa Harris-Perry: This is clearly a ton of work. How are you making it happen?

Alex Niemczewski: We have right now 120 researchers across the country who are doing things like calling local election authorities to figure out what candidates are going to be on the ballot. A lot of this information isn't online, so we have to make a lot of phone calls. Sometimes we have to send faxes. We, in the last couple of years, received a floppy disk of data.

Melissa Harris-Perry: [laughs] Stop it

Alex Niemczewski: It's hard work, but we have a huge team that is day in, day out, very busy right now working on gathering all this information.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Where do those resources come from for 120 researchers?

Alex Niemczewski: The way that we sustain ourselves is organizations can use our tools. For example, Snapchat and Tinder, are organizations that want their audiences to go vote so they pay us for those tools, and that enables us to be sustainable and make this tool for everybody.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It's not partisan is part of what I'm trying to get at. These aren't resources that are coming from the Democratic or the Republican party or the Green Party or any other party?

Alex Niemczewski: Correct. We're totally non-partisan.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Help me to understand how folks who aren't listening to The Takeaway right now, whoever those 10 people are, how it is that they would know about BallotReady and have the opportunity to make use of this.

Alex Niemczewski: We see a lot of people who find BallotReady share it on social media or even email it or talk about it with their friends. That's the biggest way that we reach people. Also, if you Google what's going to be on my ballot, we come up and we also partner with groups like I mentioned, like Snapchat, Tinder, and the NBA, to reach more voters who may not be thinking about voting because we want to meet them where they are.

Melissa Harris-Perry: When you were talking with folks or even as you do now, as you're continuing to go through the BallotReady process and you were talking before about people guessing. Guessing is one part of it, but it's also the heuristics. In certain ways, we're all guessing. We tend to guess using the heuristic of partisanship. We guess that a Democrat or we guess that a Republican is likely to be more aligned with our interests or worldview or ideology.

When some of these other heuristics for guessing are happening, I heard your point about if they're higher or lower on the ballot, but if people are using gender, for example, are they more likely to pick men or to pick women? If they're using last names, is it longer or shorter last names? I'm just wondering what you know about what happens when people don't have information.

Alex Niemczewski: There are some anecdotes. For example, in Chicago, there were stories of judicial candidates who changed their last names to sound more Irish assuming they would win. Last names tend to be based on the ethnicity of the people who live in that area. We know people tend to choose candidates who share their own gender or ethnicity more often.

Melissa Harris-Perry: The other button that's on here is the make a plan to vote button. Talk to me about that.

Alex Niemczewski: We know a lot of people are unaware that there are more options to vote other than voting on election day at your polling place, such as voting early or voting by mail. If you click the make a plan to vote button, it walks you through your options for how to vote, whether it's by mail or in person early, or on election day and making a plan. There's research that shows if voters make a plan to vote, they're more likely to actually do it.

This is also like common sense. If you make a doctor's appointment, you're more likely to go. If you plan anything, you're more likely to do it. We not only show you the steps of what you need to do to go vote, but we help you make a calendar appointment and show you a map of where you need to go.

Melissa Harris-Perry: A final question. How do I know, as a voter, if I've gone on, I've spent a little bit of time on BallotReady, how do I know that I'm ballot-ready? How can I feel that sense of confidence that you were talking about that when I walk into my polling place, I'm going to be ready to make a decision, not just on a guess, but on the real information?

Alex Niemczewski: Within BallotReady, you can actually save the candidates that you want to vote for. That way you don't have to memorize the whole list [laughs] for when you go vote. You can save them and either email them to yourself or print them out to bring with you when you go vote or just have them on your computer as you're filling out your mail and ballot.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I feel like this is news you can use like actual tools [laughs] for an election. Alex Niemczewski, CEO of BallotReady. Alex, thanks so much for your time today.

Alex Niemczewski: Thank you so much.

Melissa Harris-Perry: More of our DOWNBALLOT series all this week.

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