and discuss the candidates together. I'm the search engine looking for neutral information available online, then searching for variances or parts that need to be clarified. One item we check, regarding renewing judges or other court officials, is whether or not they're members of the Federalist Society. Sometimes we review court cases and outcomes. It's a serious dive.
As far as the ballot proposals, we go the exact opposite way. We read THE TEXT and think through gaps that could screw people or lead it to be twisted by our legislature. Our legislature is the one who reached back to a law that was passed during the Civil War. (That's why so many people will probably vote to restrict legislature's ability to change abortion issues by voting to put abortion rights in the state constitution...yeah, we're in Arizona.) There's one initiative about tip worker wages. That required a calculator to figure out how much the new base wage would be (about $0.25 less than the current one) unless/until the business owner can pencil whip that they owe the workers money. How hard is that math going to be?
I don't pressure her to look at other options or to see things my way. Sometimes we cancel each other out. Sometimes, after some discussion, I change my view or she changes hers.
Sometimes, I don't tell her how I'm going to vote and just tell her it's my vote. That did NOT go well, like in the 2024 election. She was afraid that I was going to write-in a presidential choice because I was not a fan of then-VP Biden and hadn't been for years (gaffes, Justice Thomas hearings, "advice" to President Obama not to go after bin Laden, etc.). She'd been in tears for days after the 2016 election, wondering if we would still be citizens or if we'd be property because of the talk about revoking the Fourteenth Amendment (naturalized citizenship and revoking/striking through the removal of the 3/5 compromise...restoring it).
