It Is Not A Spectator Sport

We are in a quagmire! Going to hell in a hand-basket! Or whatever other clichés you want to use, we are in another election cycle and the same thing is happening now as it did in 2024, and the election before, and before that, and…

Take a look at the current crop of political ads. Do any of these sound familiar?

• "Lowering costs for working families," "bringing down the price of everyday goods," and "making the American Dream affordable again."
• "Bringing back American manufacturing," "putting American workers first," and "building an economy from the middle out and the bottom up."
• "Bringing common sense back to Washington," "fighting for the forgotten communities," and "taking on special interests."
•  “I will stand up to Trump!,” "Standing up to executive overreach," "Protecting our democratic norms and institutions," and "Serving as a check and balance in Washington."

How many of these have you heard just today?

Okay, let me ask you a question… how are they going to do it? As they say, the devil is in the details! Yet the campaigns tell you nothing about the how. They purposely don’t tell you. Because if they don't, your mind fills in the blanks: "Yeah, cutting my taxes!" or "Yeah, they are going to make billionaires pay their fair share!" But the moment they specify what they actually want to do, they risk losing the other half of the voters who think the opposite. So, they keep voters in the dark by relying strictly on buzzwords.

Also, have you noticed that they don’t even mention their party anymore? It happens for the exact same reason they use empty buzzwords. If a candidate says the party name out loud, half of the voters immediately turn off their message. A mental buzzer goes off: "Oh, that's from the party I don't vote for," and they tune out completely. So, candidates now drop the party label altogether.

Meanwhile, the local newspaper gives candidates space to write about the upcoming election. But what do they write about? My two kids, Dick and Jane, our lovely dog Spot, and how they know the issues facing the town firsthand because their kids are in school! Um… okay. So what are the actual issues, and how will you deal with them? Zip.

Boycotting elections is self-defeating because it just hands power to the status quo, and staying silent leaves you vulnerable to manipulation by buzzwords. So how do we actually push back against the cycle? How do we bring substance back to elections?

The answer is looking at you in the mirror.

It is you!

Elections are not a spectator sport—you have to get off your couch and do the research! What has the candidate done in the past? If they have never run before and have no track record, and tell you nothing except platitudes, that also tells you a lot.

When I wanted to look up candidates, I started with Ballotpedia. When I found out who was running against Governor Lamont & Ryan Fazio, I checked his background, and then looked up his voting record on the Connecticut General Assembly's website. 

Well, there is this fabulous new tool called AI, where you can ask weird questions like, "How do I find a candidate's voting record?" Seconds later, I had direct pointers to official government portals and tracking resources:

•     The Connecticut General Assembly website for official bill tracking and session votes.
•     The LegiScan Connecticut Page to view sponsored legislation and past roll call votes.
•     Public legislative tracking databases like BillTrack50.

WOW! That was easy.

I then asked it a couple of follow-up questions: "Has Ryan Fazio said anything on abortion?" and "Has Ryan Fazio said anything on trans rights?" For the second question, it replied that he joined other Greenwich officials in condemning hateful signs at Town Hall, but otherwise, his primary legislative record and platform steer clear of culture-war debates, focusing instead on state economics and local policy.

The thing is habit and tribal loyalty are powerful forces. When people feel overwhelmed by work, life, and daily stress, falling back on party lines feels like a safe shortcut, even if it means buying into the exact buzzwords and empty promises you write about.

The bottom line is that you cannot sit on your butt and vote based on who has the prettiest ad on TV. We have to stop falling for family photo-ops and start digging into actual records.