Okay, this is probably where you will stop feeling overwhelmed and start being ticked off. At least it is in Alabama – and likely similar issues occur in most states.

You live in multiple districts – Federal congressional, state legislative (in Alabama there are separate House and Senate districts) and state school board, if you’re lucky are the only major ones. To be fair, they should be the major categories in most states – but I’m still feeling peevish with Alabama. Regardless, the multiple districts make looking up election and primary information that much more annoying. Oh, and they change every ten years, don’t forget.

So we’re now looking for the local school district in my area. AFF only endorsed three candidates in school board primaries so they may or may not have mentioned a candidate I can actually vote for. Let’s find out!

Since I already know – and so do you if you’ve been following along – that Alabama’s Secretary of State handles elections, I can just go back to the alabama.gov website and hunt under Secretary of State. Sure enough, I find a page for district maps. And double checking the page, these are the maps approved by the 2021 Special Session of the Alabama Legislature – which means they are good for 2022 (districting occurs in most states immediately after the US Census – any date that is after 2020 is good until we get close to 2031). So let’s see what we have for state school boards…

This is why we can’t have nice governments. In case you’re wondering, all Macon County has in common with Choctaw County is a large population of Democrats. Macon is much more urban (it’s between Montgomery and Auburn) and Choctaw is extremely rural (it’s county seat, Butler, has a whooping population of 1,639 ) but they share state school boards – with Montgomery the third largest city in the state. This is the kind of stupidity that happens when you turn your back on your state government for a decade…

It’s also the sort of thing we’re setting about fixing – one step at a time. So, I’m in equally irrationally drawn District 3 (seriously, parts of Montgomery County are included with Jefferson and Shelby? Democrat much?). AFF didn’t include that district but I really don’t need their recommendation at this point. I’ve done today’s task – I found my irrationally weird district state school board district!

Tomorrow is New Year’s Day – I’ll be danged if I’ll be looking up announced candidates then! See y’all on Monday for more primary excitement!

Yes, it’s supposed to be boring. Wars are exciting but who wants one of those?