I know that there do exist such mysterious sorts as the straight ticket voter, but I don’t consider myself one of them. It saddens me that people will actually use this sheet to vote straight down the line, including whether to vote “yes” or “no” for each question. But how many people do this?
    Officially, only 17 states still allow straight ticket voting on ballots. The practice has been declining in popularity for the past decade. This has come up since numerous sources have shown that straight-ticket voting encourages lazy voting, since people can simply vote for their party instead of an issue by issue basis. That means people don’t even have to bother looking up the candidates they’re voting for.
    So is it okay for the VA Democratic Party to send me a paper like this, which I could simply carry into the voting booth to better vote straight ticket? Of course it is. Still, I don’t think citizens should use it as a cheat sheet to take the research out of voting. If we don’t know what the candidates we vote for believe, we have no right to complain when we don’t agree with what they do.