Your vote is powerful. It determines who writes our laws, oversees our schools, sets our taxes and makes decisions affecting our families long after Election Day. We should treat it with the weight it deserves.
I did not always do that. I paid attention around election time, recognized familiar names and assumed I understood the people representing me. Then the uproar surrounding the Souderton Area School District board made me take a closer look.
The more I dug into the claims being made, the more contradictions, misinformation and efforts to keep information from the public I found. This had been happening for decades.
I kept asking: Where had I been? How did I not know?
How did I not know that one of our school-board members had made racist and misogynistic social-media posts? How did I miss posts disparaging teachers — the people he was elected to help establish policy for? That was a problem for me.
The more I looked, the more connections I found. This board member was appointed and later elected with the public endorsement and support of his predecessor, who had moved on to the Pennsylvania House.
She had served on the school board for 12 years, participating in consistently unanimous votes on budgets, policies and spending. Over the last four years, since her departure, our school property taxes have increased approximately 19%.
The information was not hidden. It was in meeting minutes, budgets, voting records, social-media posts and campaign materials. I simply had not been looking.
Soon, signs will cover busy roads and candidates will fill our feeds with polished photographs, promises and posts designed to make us angry, afraid or hopeful. By Election Day, some voters will recognize a name simply because they have driven past it for 60 days.
But familiarity is not a qualification. The candidate with the most signs, the most posts or the biggest advertising budget is not necessarily the person best prepared to represent us.
Campaigns are marketing operations. Candidates show us what they want us to see: community events, smiling photographs, grant announcements and carefully selected votes. What they often leave out is context.
When a political post appears in your feed, pause before liking or sharing it. Is it explaining an issue, or trying to frighten you? Does it identify a bill, vote or policy that you can verify? Does it provide context, or reduce a complicated issue to a few inflammatory words? If it looks like fearmongering, that is your signal to investigate—not react.
Incumbents already have a record. Look at how they voted, what they introduced, what they accomplished and whether their words match their actions. Did they work on the issues they now call urgent? Did they answer questions and explain their positions? Pennsylvania voters can review bills and roll-call votes on the official General Assembly website at PAlegis.us.
New candidates require a different kind of research, but they do not get a free pass because they have never held office. Look into their professional experience, community involvement, public statements, endorsements, campaign funding and organizational connections. Listen to forums and interviews. Ask whether they understand the authority and limitations of the office they are seeking.
The same standard should apply to every candidate, regardless of party. I no longer excuse misinformation because it comes from someone on my side, and I will not dismiss a good idea simply because it comes from the other side. A party label does not tell me whether someone is honest, competent, prepared or effective.
Most importantly, use more than one source. A campaign page is not research. Neither is a single Facebook post, television commercial, text message or yard sign. If a claim makes you angry, confirm it. If a promise sounds perfect, examine it. If a familiar name feels like the safe choice, ask yourself whether familiarity is the only reason.
I learned the hard way that our responsibility as voters does not begin when we enter the polling place. It begins long before that, while there is still time to question, compare and verify.
I cannot change the years when I was not paying close enough attention. I can change what I do now — and I can urge others not to make the same mistake.
Campaign promises fade. Signs come down. Social-media posts disappear beneath the next controversy. The record remains — and the record is what should earn our vote.
