07/18/12: Oh, there are local elections, too?

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

FOR THE NEXT 110-plus days, Virginians are going to be inundated with presidential campaign advertising. Getting away from it is going to be nearly impossible.

Virginia is a battleground state and a virtual must-win for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, so expect a barrage of TV and radio ads, mail and visits from the candidates.

If that weren’t enough, we have a U.S. Senate race. By every measure, this contest between former governors Tim Kaine and George Allen will be close. Real Clear Politics, which tracks polling in races around the country, shows the two virtually tied.

Taking the third spot on the ballot will be congressional races. Every incumbent in Virginia’s 11 congressional districts has drawn a challenger. Most pundits believe the most competitive race in the state will be in Hampton Roads, in the 2nd Congressional District. Incumbent Scott Rigell is being challenged by businessman Paul Hirschbiel.

Although the district now includes several precincts in Newport News that are heavily Republican — in 2008, John McCain took 56 percent of the vote in them — Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball changed the race last week from “Likely Republican” to “Leans Republican.”

The federal races will dominate almost everything from now until Nov. 6, even though that won’t be all that’s on the ballot, especially in Virginia Beach, Portsmouth and Suffolk. Those three cities have moved their local elections to November.

So who is running for the city council and school board in those cities?

I wish I could tell you that finding the answer was easy, but it isn’t. The State Board of Elections hasn’t published a list of local candidates yet, even though it has been more than a month since the filing deadline passed. The Virginia Public Access Project has only council candidates, not the school boards. The websites of the cities have nothing either.

After nearly an hour of searching, I found a single article published in this paper that listed all of the candidates who had qualified to run as of June 13.

If finding out who is running is so hard, how will voters be able to make an informed choice? How hard can it be for each city’s website to include, on the registrars’ pages, the list of local candidates?

While Thomas Jefferson opined often on education and information, journalist Jim Lehrer said it best: “If we don’t have an informed electorate, we don’t have a democracy.”

Yes, we have 110-plus days until the election. For the nearly 60 local candidates, that time will pass quickly. The noise of the campaigns on the ballot above them is enough of a challenge. Voters’ difficulty in discovering even the names of the candidates makes the task even more difficult.

This is just one more reason local elections should be in May. At least then the candidates have a chance to be heard.