Back long ago while the Earth was still cooling and I was in college, political science journals were full of studies – some of them even good studies – that all said the same thing: beyond a certain point money had no effect on election outcome.

The effect is strongest when the electorate is least well informed. Money works extremely well in local elections because so few people have any idea what’s going on in their local governments. If they even have a local paper and occasionally read it, the paper usually won’t cover boring things like school board meeting and anything happening at City Hall. The result is most people don’t even recognize the names of the incumbents on the ballot.

So, you’re staring at this oversized sheet of paper with a bunch of names and offices you have no idea about. Who are these people? What is this office? And what do I do now?

Most people do one of three things: They vote for the party they favor (which doesn’t work in primaries of course); they skip the parts they aren’t sure of; and most commonly, they vote for any name that sounds vaguely familiar.

So names they have been driving past for weeks on gigantic billboards and hundreds of yard signs are far more likely to be voted for than the name they have never seen or heard. Admit it – you’ve done this. We all have.

This tendency to vote for the familiar (yep, certain kinds of names are more likely to receive votes) when we don’t have anything else to go on is why spending lots of money in campaigning WORKS. Name recognition is king. All too often we vote for the name, not the candidate.

But there are so many! Before you start to use this excuse, name your top ten favorite music groups, sports teams or celebrities. A lot of you can rat off ten of each of those categories – and a few dozen more. There aren’t too many politicians that you actually vote for to keep up with – most of us just make no real effort to do so and the media gleefully ignores the boring and time consuming local reporting because we don’t demand otherwise.

Historically, we’ve tried to control the influence of corporations and other wealthy entities by limiting their contributions. There’s good reason to use this line of attack, but there’s a far more effective means. Money will always have some effect on elections – but neither money nor corporations can vote. YOU can; they can’t.

So what happens if you walk in to the polling station, look at the ballot and say to yourself, “Oh, Joe is running for coroner again? He’s been doing a good job so I’ll vote for him. But Tom isn’t doing what I think he should on the school board – and I hear good things about Mary, his opponent. I’ll vote for her.”

No amount of cute signs on the highway will influence someone who actually knows their stuff. Elections don’t happen every day so there’s plenty of time to learn. And maybe call your local TV station to ask why they don’t cover more about the school boards.

Knowledge can have power that money doesn’t – but only if we use it.