You just remided me of something. The first election that I was eligible for was in 1980. I was 18 or 19 or so. I was excited about it, liked Reagan and detested Carter in spite of being raised in a family of solid wall-to-wall Democrats.
When voting day came around, I took a look at the sample ballot, and realized that I had no idea what the hell I was doing. In addition to the Presidential candidates, there was a swarm of Congress candidates, Senate candidates, candidates for various local and state offices, and a long list of ballot measures and initiatives. I was stunned. I had no grounding on the facts of the election. I felt that I was way out of my depth- and I finally decided that voting while so ill-informed was tantamount to blindly shooting in a residential neighborhood. I couldn’t do it in good conscience. I sat the election out, and vowed that next time, I’d know exactly what I was doing.
That’s what I did. From then on out, I made it a point to understand what was on the ballot, before it arrived. I remember in 1988 sitting with my then-fiancee in the kitchen for several hours with a sample ballot, while we hashed out how we were going to vote and amicably debated the various points of the issues. We made crib notes, and walked off to the polling place.
But I just couldn’t make myself vote in that one election, in 1980. I don’t think there are many people who think like that, anymore. I still feel badly about it.