From personal experience, when you’re working 2 jobs and raising 3 kids and spend every waking moment worried you can’t pay your bills or that you suck as a parent because you’re not around enough, taking time to research candidates feels impossible. Which is right where some like to keep us.
I’m in a better place now and have the time to do the work to make better decisions, but it still feels like an uphill battle against the multitude of the uninformed.
I see what you’re saying but it’s also kind of an excuse. It’s not that hard to find out, for instance in this case, where candidates stand on LGBTQ issues or on education.
I think its more like the mindset of:
“ugh I’m so tired and have to work tomorrow, I don’t feel like I have the energy to look up the candidates, it’s just one vote, is it really gonna matter”
My US citizen mom doesn’t even vote until I tell her how to register and fill out the out the mail ballots. And didn’t even make up her mind until I told her to vote Harris.
Yeah, I spent about 8 hours going over every person this election, including local mayor, city council, and board of education members. And, yeah, 8 hours isn’t an amount of time everyone has all in one block, but most of the research was pretty easy to digest quickly, and I could’ve split it into a bunch of 5-minute pieces whenever I had a bit of time over the course of a couple months. I get that it’s not the most interesting or calming activity, but I think people could at least take a small amount of enjoyment knowing they’ve properly educated themselves on the goals and qualifications of all the people on their ballot.
The place I was in at the time, it was a struggle to convince myself that I should shower more than once a week and not cry over how I was going to find the money to buy my kids socks. When life is that stressful and depressing, it’s hard to see and to take on more issues than what you’re already trying to overcome on a day to day basis.
Again, I used to think that people in power couldn’t be that evil, but now moving past that place I can see how keeping people down, under pressure, and uneducated really does benefit certain groups.
