Voting: A Primer on Wielding Your Power 

Lots of people are asking what they can do to influence politics these days.  There are a lot of ways to engage, and it is our hope that you do choose to engage.  First, though, we want to talk about voting.  There are elections across 32 states this year, most of them on November 4.  They are elections for local and statewide offices as well as ballot measures.  Do not make the mistake of thinking these elections aren’t important and your vote won’t make a difference.  It does.  Your communities and states matter and how they are run matters.  

In the 2024 election, 63.9% of eligible voters voted.  There are many reasons why someone may not have voted.  Maybe they had to work that day and didn’t have the option of early voting or voting by mail.  Maybe they’d been wiped from the voter registry.  Maybe they couldn’t decide on any declared candidate.  Of that 63.9% who voted, 49.8% voted for Trump, equal to 31.31% of the entire population.  Harris got 48.3% of the voters who turned out, giving her 30.86% of the population.  The percentages don’t equal 100 because 1.73% voted for third parties.

If you followed the numbers above, you’ll see that nobody could claim even half the voters, much less a mandate.  This is a commentary on our public life, civic participation, and politics.  Citizens have rights under the constitution, which we often hear about, but they also have responsibilities.  One of those, and one that was hard fought for by suffragettes and the Civil Rights movement, is voting.  

Voting enables citizens to have their voice heard on how money is spent on parks, infrastructure, social services, policing, schools, and many other things important to all of us.  It enables us to place people whose policies we trust in charge of our cities and counties, school boards, jails, libraries, trash pickup, environmental regulations and more.  It enables us to choose who represents us in state legislatures and the governor’s mansion and who could become our chief law enforcement officer of the state.  Many of these elections are ‘off-cycle,’ or outside the four-year presidential election cycle that also includes the election of some United States Senators and all 435 members of the United States House of Representatives. 

While the general federal elections get much more attention, state and local elections offer more opportunity for participation and a higher likelihood that you could converse with the people you elect. Primary elections are even more important, and we had them in Virginia earlier this year.  Primaries offer you the opportunity to choose the candidates who will actually run in the general election.  

Who runs all these elections?  State boards of election, along with local electoral boards, registrars, and officers of election.  So, how do you vote?  You will need to register to vote, find out what’s on the ballot, including people and initiatives, and decide whether to mail in a ballot, vote early in person, or go to your polling place on election day. 

In Virginia, you can register to vote online up to eleven days before the election.  After that, if you haven’t registered, you can do so in person up to election day.  If you are late to register, you will have to vote on a provisional ballot.  If you haven’t been following the election closely or don’t have a good source of local news, you may want to preview your ballot.  In Arlington, the county website has a copy of the ballot.  If your jurisdiction doesn’t have a website with that information, you can enter your address on BallotReady and get a copy of the ballot.  If there are candidates or ballot measures you don’t know about, you can research them before you go to vote. Most candidates have websites and ballot measures will have been discussed at council or board meetings and with luck, been written about by a local reporter or documented in minutes.

With options in Virginia to vote by mail and early in person as well as on election day, you need a plan.  In Virginia, you can request a mail in ballot from your local registrar and these are mailed to you for your return by the date outlined in the instructions.  You can also find out the dates, hours and locations of places to vote early, or you can locate your polling place for election day.  If you have registered to vote, you will have been told your polling place.  You can also contact your state or local election office.

Once you’ve registered, found a sample ballot, researched candidates and ballot measures, and decided where and when you’ll vote, you just need to show up with the required identification, pick up your ballot, and fill it out.  Trust me.  It’s satisfying, and it’s one of the best ways to make yourself heard.