Vote
Voting has never been more important. Or more tiring and exhausting to keep up with. Check out our resources on how to make your voice heard by our elected government.
Your Vote Is
Your Voice
(Updated for 2026.)
Voting fatigue is real. Between presidential elections, midterms, primaries, special elections, local races, ballot measures, and school board seats, it can feel like we're always being asked to research something new while also managing work, family, bills, and everything else life throws at us.
But here's the truth that keeps us showing up anyway: local elections are decided by dozens of votes, not millions.
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A city council race in Chico can swing on 50 ballots.
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A school board seat can be won or lost by a single precinct.
Your vote — and the votes of your neighbors — carries real, measurable weight at the local level in a way that can feel impossible to see in a presidential race.
We put together this page to help you cut through the noise, understand what's actually on your ballot, know what to look for when evaluating candidates and measures, and make sure your vote counts.
We’re all navigating this crazy space together, so we’ll try to help provide resources as we come across them.
Know What's on Your Ballot Before You Vote
California voters face a lot of choices on a typical ballot: federal races, state offices, state legislative seats, local offices, state ballot measures, and local ballot measures. It can feel overwhelming. Let’s try to break it down.
Get your sample ballot early.
Your sample ballot is mailed to you before each election and is also available online. Log in to your voter profile at buttevotes.net to see exactly what will be on your ballot based on your address. This is important because ballots vary by precinct — your ballot may include measures and races that your neighbor one street over doesn't have, and vice versa.
Research before you fill it out.
Once you have your sample ballot, look up each candidate and measure. We've listed specific things to look for below. Taking notes on a printed copy of your sample ballot and then transferring your choices to your official ballot is a method many experienced voters swear by.
Blank is okay… but informed is better.
You don't have to vote in every race on your ballot. It's perfectly legal to skip a race you don't know enough about. Skipping a race does not 'spoil' the rest of your ballot. Your votes in other races will still be counted normally. But an informed vote, even on an obscure local judgeship, is worth the research.
The single most effective thing you can do as a voter is open your sample ballot before Election Day and research every item on it, not the day before, but a week or two ahead. Discuss it with people you trust. Learn what you can about the items and people you’ll be voting for. Have an idea of what you’ll be dealing with before you get to the voting booth.
What to Look For When Evaluating Your Ballot
Local Races — City Council, County Supervisor, School Board, Special Districts
Why these matter most: Local races are where your vote has the greatest individual impact and where the decisions made most directly affect your daily life. It influences your streets, your schools, your parks, your water, your housing costs, your neighborhood's safety. In the North State, issues like smoke management, transit, and water don't stop at city limits. Look for candidates who demonstrate an ability to build bridges with other local leaders.
A city council member votes on zoning laws that determine whether affordable housing gets built. A school board member decides curriculum, hires the superintendent, and sets the tone for how your public schools operate. A water district board member approves rate increases that affect every household in the county.
These races are also the most likely to be decided by a small number of votes. Every. Vote. Matters.
What to look for in local candidates:
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Ties to the community. Does this person actually live here, work here, or have deep roots in the area? Local government works best when the people making decisions have real skin in the game — they live with the consequences of what they vote for.
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Track record over promises. Has this candidate served on a commission, board, neighborhood group, or nonprofit? What did they actually do there? Past behavior is a far better predictor than campaign promises.
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Funding sources. Where is the money coming from? Does the candidate’s funding come from local individuals, or is it concentrated in specific industries or outside interest groups? A candidate funded primarily by local residents and small donations is likely to be accountable to those residents. A candidate funded primarily by real estate developers, corporate PACs, or outside groups is likely to be accountable to those groups instead. Reviewing a candidate’s donor list helps you understand their primary stakeholders. In California, all campaign finance is public — you can look up any candidate's donors at cal-access.sos.ca.gov.
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Positions on specific local issues. What is their position on housing development? On homelessness? On local law enforcement practices? On parks and open space? On small business support? On fiscal responsibility? A candidate who answers these questions vaguely or pivots to national talking points may not have done the work of understanding local needs.
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Accessibility. Will this person actually be reachable after they're elected? Have they shown up at community events, responded to constituent emails, or attended public forums? Elected officials who are hard to reach before they're elected are usually harder to reach after.
Questions to ask yourself:
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Who does this person seem to be working for? Residents, or specific outside interests?
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Do their stated priorities match what I see as the real needs of this community?
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Would I trust this person to make a fair decision when the interests of developers conflict with the interests of renters? When business interests conflict with environmental ones?
State Legislative Races —
Assembly and State Senate
Why these matter: State legislators write the laws that govern California, including housing requirements, healthcare, education funding, environmental protections, labor rights, criminal justice, and the state budget that funds every county in the state including Butte. They also draw congressional district lines, which affects federal representation for a decade at a time.
CA District 1 has long been treated as a safe Republican seat, and progressive candidates have often been discouraged from running. Margins matter. A close race sends a message. And Prop 50 redistricting has changed the math in ways that make prior assumptions unreliable.
What to look for in state candidates:
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Committee assignments and bill sponsorship. If an incumbent is running for reelection, we can look at what committees they serve on and what bills they've authored or co-sponsored. This tells you what they've actually worked on, not just what they say they care about. (The downside is that it requires a lot of work on our part, as voters, to find what those assignments and bills might have been.)
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Position on state budget priorities. The state budget is a values document. Ask where a candidate stands on education funding, wildfire prevention and recovery funding, housing programs, and healthcare. These are not abstract suggestions, but rather they determine what services and resources Butte County receives from Sacramento.
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Environmental and water policy. For Northern California specifically, water rights, forest management, and wildfire funding are kind of important issues for our region, on a day-to-day basis. We have a specific amount of water as a resource and a lot of different uses for it, from human drinking water to agricultural use, and it impacts our collective health and jobs and our economy. A state legislator who does not have a clear, realistic, and credible position on these topics is not paying attention to the people they want to represent.
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Party accountability vs. independence. Does this candidate have a record of standing up to their own party when constituent interests required it? Or do they vote with party leadership 100% of the time? We’re not out here promoting one party or another, precisely because the interests of the voters should come before the interests of a party.
Congressional Races —
U.S. House and Senate
Why these matter: Congress controls federal funding, federal law, and ,increasingly, the basic functioning of our democracy. The CA-01 seat, currently vacant following the death of Rep. Doug LaMalfa, is one of the most significant local races in years. A special primary election is scheduled for June 2, 2026, but the vote in November will be inclusive of a group of voters that won’t be part of District 1 next time the representative is up for election. It’s important now, for historic reasons, and it will be important again with the very next vote just because the vote demographics will realistically be shifting, drastically, a second time immediately afterwards.
What to look for in congressional candidates:
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Independence from corporate and PAC money. Federal campaigns are awash in outside money. A candidate who has pledged not to take corporate PAC money, and who backs that pledge up with their actual donor list, is starting from a more accountable position.
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Constituent services record. A congressional office serves its district not just through legislation but through casework — helping constituents navigate federal agencies, access veterans' benefits, secure federal grants for local projects, and more. Ask whether a candidate or their endorsers have a record of actually delivering services to constituents, not just casting votes.
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Position on voting rights and democratic norms. We include this specifically because it is not a partisan talking point. It is a structural question about whether elections will continue and gets right to the heart of our democracy. Citizens speaking up via voting should be the mechanism by which power changes hands. A candidate who has questioned the legitimacy of election results without credible evidence, or who has supported measures that make voting harder without justification, is a candidate we should all be examining very carefully regardless of their other positions.
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Local relevance. Does this candidate understand the specific needs of Northern California? Water infrastructure, wildfire response, rural healthcare access, agricultural policy, broadband access in rural areas? Do they take into account the sometimes conflicting needs of folks who live in smaller towns alongside those who live in sprawling cities? Or are they primarily focused on national issues that don't connect to the day-to-day realities of Butte County?
Ballot measures are often the most confusing part of a California ballot. The language is dense, the titles are sometimes misleading, and both the "yes" and "no" sides spend heavily on advertising that obscures more than it reveals.
How to decode a ballot measure:
Read the full text summary, not just the title.
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The official voter guide is mailed to every registered voter and available online at voterguide.sos.ca.gov, It includes a mostly-plain-language summary of every state measure. Read the summary, the fiscal impact analysis, and the arguments for and against. The fiscal impact analysis, written by the Legislative Analyst's Office, is usually the most neutral source of information provided on the measure.
Follow the money.
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Who is funding the "yes" campaign and who is funding the "no" campaign? This is often the most revealing single fact about a measure. If a measure to regulate a specific industry is funded primarily by that industry, that's a signal worth weighing. If a measure to protect workers is funded primarily by the employers affected by it, same thing. Donor information for California ballot measures is public at sos.ca.gov/campaign-lobbying.
Ask what happens if it passes — and what happens if it fails.
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Some measures are genuinely urgent. Others are less critical. Think through both scenarios before defaulting to "yes" because something sounds good or "no" because change feels risky.
Be skeptical of confusing language.
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California ballot measure language is notoriously difficult. "A yes vote means no" is not a joke and it happens regularly. Read carefully. When in doubt, look for a trusted voter guide from an organization whose values you understand and whose analysis you can verify.
Local measures deserve as much attention as state ones.
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A local bond measure for school facilities, a sales tax for road maintenance, a rezoning measure, or a parks funding initiative will affect your neighborhood directly. These can add to local taxes and raise or lower the cost of living, depending on what is promised by the measure. These are definitely worth the extra thirty minutes of research they sometimes require. The internet is one source for these, and often the local library or City Hall will have resources to further dig up the info we need to form the fuller picture.
State and Local Ballot Measures
Judicial Elections and Non-Partisan Offices
The races for judges, superintendent of public instruction, community college trustees, water board members, etc, often appear at the bottom of the ballot and receive the least attention. They are not unimportant.
What to look for:
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For judges: bar association ratings, endorsements from legal organizations, and any record of decisions if the judge is an incumbent.
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For non-partisan local offices: treat them the same as city council races. Look at funding sources, community ties, and specific positions on issues relevant to that office's responsibilities.
For these races especially, a trusted voter guide is invaluable. The League of Women Voters of Butte County publishes nonpartisan guides for local races at lwvbuttecounty.org and is one of the best resources in the area for unbiased candidate information.
Chico and Butte County:
What to Watch For Right Now
Beyond the general principles above, here are the specific issues that community members in our area should be paying particular attention to as they evaluate candidates and measures:
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Wildfire preparedness and recovery funding. Butte County has experienced some of the most devastating wildfires in California history. Ask every candidate — local, state, and federal — what specifically they will do to fund prevention, improve response, and support ongoing recovery. Vague answers are not acceptable given what our communities have been through.
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Water access and infrastructure. Northern California water rights are complex and contested. A candidate who doesn't understand the basics of our local water situation — groundwater sustainability, Feather River management, agricultural water rights — is not ready to represent this district.
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Housing affordability. Chico has faced severe housing pressure since the Camp Fire displaced thousands of residents from Paradise. Consider where candidates stand on zoning reform, affordable housing development, tenant protections, and the use of state and federal housing funds.
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Rural healthcare access. Butte County has lost hospital capacity in recent years. Access to primary care, mental health services, and emergency services in rural areas is a genuine crisis. Ask candidates what they will do about it.
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Economic opportunity and small business. Chico's economy is driven by small businesses, agriculture, California State University Chico, and Butte College. Ask candidates what they would do to support local economic resilience rather than simply attracting outside corporate investment.
CA District 1 special election — June 2, 2026.
This is the most consequential local race in years. The seat has been vacant since January. We have had no voice in Washington DC for far too long as it is. Research the candidates early, vote in the primary, and understand that a June primary in a special election will have low turnout, which means that every vote matters even more.
A Word on Voting Fatigue
We want to acknowledge something directly: the pace of elections and political demands right now is genuinely exhausting. It's okay to feel worn out. It's okay to not have an opinion on every race and every measure. It's okay to skip a race you don't know enough about rather than guess.
What we'd ask is this: don't let exhaustion become disengagement. The people and organizations that want you to stop paying attention are counting on exactly that. Fatigue is a strategy used against engaged citizens and the best counter to it is not forcing yourself to care about everything, but choosing a few things to care about deeply and doing that well.
Vote your local races with care. Vote in every primary, not just general elections. Bring one person with you to the polls or remind one person to mail their ballot.
That's enough. That matters. And we'll be here to help you do it.