Well, I guess I'm ready to vote. Most of my choices were settled months ago, but there were some local elections and ballot questions to research. Yeah, I even look up Judges and School Board Members...
The Judges are just "retain or not", I was pleased to find that the 3 current ones had excellent credentials and experience and were on the defense side in the past. I'd rather have a guilty person get off once than an innocent person imprisoned.
The School Board election was easy enough. Maryland has 4 year terms. The one at-large is elected in presidential years, and all the other in the mid-cycle elections. This was an at-large election, so it was easier. One had experience, emphasized science and teacher-training, and suggests "slow-retirement of teachers so they can mentor the new ones. The other (as far as I can tell) manages a day care center. Nothing wrong with that, but apparently has little actual school-management experience.
That left the 2 ballot questions. One was for encoding women's reproductive care into the State Constitution. I'm going for that without any hesitation.
The other was more complicated. All about changing the County Government. The choices were the current form ("home rule"), and a "charter" form with more county-wide consolidation of organization. I visited 3 sites discussing them and still couldn't really understand the consequences. But 1 site showed a map of the State counties showing which each had. The 3 counties I think are best-run all had the "charter type". The 3 most conservative (and kind of "run-down") counties all had the "home rule" system. So I'm going with "charter". Might as well advance with the times and what seems to work best...
