You have in your hand the ballot that has the most direct, immediate effect on your daily life.

Odd-numbered years, like this one, are dubbed “off-year” elections where we pick local government officials and school board members.

Because the daily focus in the media, and often in our conversations, is on the White House horse race, or the insular, out-of-touch circus in Washington, D.C., there’s little attention on your neighborhood, your family, or your needs and concerns. 

For reasons that have always puzzled me, many voters completely overlook local elections, with turnout for city council, school boards and county commissions often running significantly below elections for president and U.S. Congress.  

As a society, we focus on what affects us less, while overlooking what impacts us more.

Though the coverage has diminished, the issues have not changed.

Are you concerned about public safety? Wondering why a homeless tent city has sprouted in your community? Or when and whether your street gets plowed in the winter? The quality of your trash service? This is all done by your municipal government.

A great example is Aurora, where voters must choose between very different visions for their city.

A center-right majority on council, along with Mayor Mike Coffman, have done what local government does best by tacking the difficult issues that are foundational to quality of life and economic vitality. 

And these successful elected officials, who have bucked the blue wave besetting Colorado, are faced with hard left candidates – including Coffman, who is facing an avowed socialist. 

Stay the course in Aurora, and life gets better in neighborhoods across the city.  Reverse course, and welcome to downtown Denver.

The same is true with the quality of education in your community. The future of the schools – and the success of Colorado kids is also a fundamentally local decision, and the education establishment loves it when voters pay little attention to school board races.

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The good news is parents are increasingly demanding a change in course of out-of-touch schools, ones fixated on hard-left woke policies that are soft on safety and off-track on rigorous balanced academics. Moms and dads, across the ideological spectrum, were taken aback at what they saw online during the COVID online learning period.

But because local citizens are often detached from the arcane, day-to-day minutiae of local school districts, who is there day after day? Teacher unions and the rest of the education establishment groups that want more money, less accountability and are keen to stonewall parents when they question a racially focused, academically flaccid curriculum.

Consider two out-of-touch school boards.

In Denver, voters need to wrestle with woke lunatics who were so soft on school safety, in a crime-plagued urban core, they pulled trained police officers out of schools and saddled educators with managing safety until tragedy struck.  If voters are paying attention, they would demand a serious course correction.  The left hopes they won’t.

Voters in Douglas County have the opposite problem. Fed up with loopy lefty teacher union-funded school board members, center-right voters elected board members who claimed to be conservative. But they were hoodwinked into trying to be liked by the education crowd and have proposed a tin-eared local tax increase in the same year voters are facing a 40% to 50% property tax hike. The district will have a flood of new money even without the tax increase.  Fingers crossed local voters not only shoot down this duplicative tax hike – but also elect new conservative board members who will be “true to their school.”

Just like in Denver, the left is hoping Douglas County voters won’t pay attention in this “off-year” election. 

America is a do-it-yourself country. That means opening the ballot you plucked out of the mailbox, reading up on the candidates and the issues facing your community and your schools, and casting the vote you believe is best for you, your family and your neighborhood.

If you leave a voter vacuum, chances are you’re not going to like who – and what – fills it.

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens, is a communications and media relations strategist and ghostwriter based in the Denver area.