Election Day is less than three weeks away. However, mail in ballots have already been delivered to your mailbox.

There are some things you may want to consider before you cast your vote. 

In the search to get votes, many people who are otherwise honest, hard-working folks somehow are changed into politicians who promise anything to get elected – then change their tune once seated.

The higher up the electoral food chain that the candidate seeking office is looking to climb, the more money is spent to get your vote. For example, if it’s a local community service district, school district or city council race, the amounts are considerably less than for regional, statewide or national races.

When you get your voters pamphlet, carefully read the text — not just the title — of all the measures before casting your vote.

The titles can be misleading, so look in the fine print for clues concerning why you should or shouldn’t support a measure or candidate.

A perfect example is the statewide and local campaigns for school bonds that will appear on the ballot in November.

For the last few weeks, local print and electronic media have been bombarded with advertising for these measures. That means the folks funding these campaigns probably have a lot to gain (cash-wise) if their position prevails. 

When this much money is being spent this early, I get suspicious.
 
For example, the Lompoc Unified School District bond M2024 is being sold to voters to fund rehabilitation of aging infrastructure, but buried in the text is this phrase “class size reduction.”

Translated, this means more union schoolteachers for smaller class sizes, which has nothing to do with upgrading facilities. You can be sure the teacher’s union leadership will try hard to divert as much as they can away from classroom rehabilitation for increased pay and benefits for their members.

Then there are the individual candidates for each office; be assured, incumbents will try to convince you that their time in office has given them the experience necessary to make sound decisions.

Do some research and find out for yourselves whether their claims of supporting the things that matter to you and/or made your life better are true.
 
For example, if a candidate seeking office was previously elected, then rejected by voters several times there is probably a reason. Either they didn’t deliver what they promised, or they deceived the public and got caught.
 
At least in local campaigns you can check the public record to see what incumbents, or former elected or appointed officials have said or voted for/against in the past to gauge the validity of their current campaign rhetoric.

Be wary of any local campaign that seems to be spending more money on advertising than you have witnessed from other candidates in previous years.
 
Their challengers will try to convince you that the incumbent is unfit for the job. Pay close attention to their arguments; sometimes they have valid points and other times they may be tossing barn dust around just to foul the air with irrelevant chatter.

The First Amendment to the Constitution protects free speech; this means candidates and their political action committees can express things as fact that may not be true. We have seen this many times in previous campaigns, but we usually don’t find out the truth until well after the votes have been counted.

Next, in local elections read the ballot statements included in the election guide; these are limited to less than 300 words, so they will be a better source of information than anything you see in print advertising, hear in the media, get in the mail, or is hung on your screen door.

Finally, the worst place to get reliable information is on one of the many blogs that will pop up discussing ballot issues and candidates. These are often sources of wild rumors, false information, and somewhat slanderous commentaries.

After you have carefully researched the ballot pamphlet sent by your local election authorities, be sure to cast your vote.

Why? Because your vote really does count. Besides, it’s your country and you shouldn’t complain about the result unless you vote.