a little megathread for this seems useful. what’s on your ballot folks? are you going out to vote today or have you already voted? if you haven’t or are interested in what significant elections are taking place today, Bolts Magazine has its yearly cheat sheet.
I discovered today that I live in an unincorporated community, so I’m apparently not governed by the city in which my address resides but rather just by the county. So I have nothing to vote for today.
Best of luck to everyone else for a quick and painless experience!
There is an entire district in Seattle that is unincorporated. It is such a crap situation for the people there since they are very much part of the city but get no say in city elections. It is also one of the more diverse districts in the city, so representation is lacking. Part of the district got incorporated to the closest suburb about 10 years ago, so at least those of us in that region get to have some say. I am not sure how only part of it got incorporated, though.
So I did some reading on the history of incorporation of the district. Apparently Seattle decided to not incorporate it because it would cost too much to add social services. Instead they encouraged the nearest suburb to try to incorporate them. The suburb has a history of just not expanding social services. In 2012 the suburb was able to get some of the district to vote to incorporate, but they have been unsuccessful in convincing the rest of the district. Turns out it is a very complicated situation.
oh god, i hate stupid municipal technicalities like this lol. american municipal borders are so bad at almost every level of government