You’re beginning to wonder why you should even care anymore, right? This government stuff is BORING.

That is the important stuff. If it’s exciting enough to make the nightly news – or cable – it’s already a big mess. Media concentrates on the car crashes and train wrecks – not the stop lights and switches. But preventing the bad stuff that gets in the news happens at the stop light – the boring stuff – not once the sirens are already blaring.

A responsible citizen wants to avoid blaring sirens – except maybe at the Fourth of July parade. We want to install good people in positions of power so that they do the very best they can to represent us well – and to make the best decisions they can.

Sure, it sounds all naïve – but is it really? Politicians spend a lot of time hiding their misdeeds from the public – why bother if the public isn’t important? The truth is, the voter is still king – so long as he doesn’t abdicate his responsibility. All that sappy sounding stuff about voting and responsibility – THAT’S the stuff that counts. Our government really does draw its authority from the governed and if we want government to be better, we have to actually vote responsibly.

Which gets us back to the boring stuff – who the heck are the primary candidates in my party’s primary?

Let’s find out for the Republican primary in Alabama State School Board, District 3 – and remember, what works for my district will work for yours as well!

Quick recap – it’s too early to get a sample ballot in my state for the primary. I don’t want to wait for a sample ballot since there are a LOT more candidates in a primary and I want to take my time deciding who to vote for. So I’ve located a partial list of offices and I’m starting at the bottom of that list – hence the State School Board.

Back to the search engine! Typing in ‘Alabama state school board district three primary’ I get this:

Hmm, I’ll keep the Birmingham article in mind for later but let’s see what Ballotpedia says.

Er, after we click on the first one and not the lower one – oops!

The sharp eyed among you will notice that there is no District 3 listed. No District 1, either.

Scrolling down I found Districts 1 and 3 – both for the 2020 election. Hmmm…

It’s not a big mystery – the office holders are elected for four year terms on a rotating basis – it’s the same reason you never elect both of your Federal senators in the same cycle.

Scrolling down we find out what the State School Board does:

Considering that Alabama school children frequently have to bring their own toilet paper, I’d say the state school board has some work to do. Looking at the compensation explains why these positions are frequently unopposed – even assuming that they actually get the state employee per diem ($11.25 in 2014, if memory serves) that’s not exactly an attractive compensation package. There’s very likely more here than meets the eye – but that’s not what we’re here for – at least not today.

So, what have we learned? Well, if District 3 were in an election cycle I’d now have the names of the announced candidates since the districts that are holding elections have their candidates listed.

So in 2024, I can head straight to Ballotpedia to get the announced candidates early. And if that doesn’t work – because life is like that sometimes – I can just start the process again. I took a week writing this up but in reality, the whole search process was less than ten minutes. Finding out what offices are up for election and who’s running is not hard. You’ll see that tomorrow when we look at the Alabama Public Service Commission – assuming there’s an election in my district!