Please make sure that any young or new voters that you know

understand that every single ballot candidate or issue does NOT have to be voted on in order to make your ballot valid.

Some people who are otherwise well intentioned and well informed think so. I even know of two PhD's who didn't realize they didn't have to fill out the whole thing. They live in a state with a ridiculous number of items on the ballot and had been putting off doing theirs because the task seemed so onerous.

I told them to feel free to just vote for anyone who has a D by their name. If they want to do more, most states have ballot guides with helpful information. In my state, Washington, there is the Progressive Voters Guide.

I really think that this might be impacting turnout of the youngest voters, who think they have something better to do than spend hours figuring out how to vote on all the judges and minor initiatives. Doing a ballot can feel too much like taking a test -- for which they're not really prepared. If they know they can skip races and issues they don't really care about, they might be more likely to vote for the most important offices and get those ballots in.