We normally vote for candidates who are usually identified as belonging to one party or another.
Occasionally, we can vote for issues: bond referenda, recalls, etc.
The candidates may assume that by voting for them, we are voting for their proposals, but this is not always the case.
In elections for judges, we know almost nothing: vote for Pineda, Smith or Chong.
In this case, the better informed voters may pick those identified as better qualified by a bar association endorsement, which may or may not be what they would agree with.
The surnames can be deceptive. There are a lot of Cubans named Smith. Some names can be confusing, like Shapiro, which looks Italian, but is Jewish as a rule. The actual ethnicity of some names can confuse anyone: Green or Lee.
We are in a time when we could have direct democracy and have the voters vote directly on every issue via phone or computer. I do not know whether this would be better or worse, but it surely would be different.
