Moscow residents shared their thoughts after casting their ballots at the polls. Voters felt compelled to vote for their community, while many had difficulty researching candidates.
Laura Botkin is a regular voter each year who follows the local elections.
“I always vote if I can and think it’s important to be involved if you care about how your life is, how the city is run,” Botkin said.
Botkin decided to vote for mayoral candidate Jim Gray.
“I would have like to see a slightly different response to some of the mandates that cause some businesses to shut down, just a little bit more personal freedom,” she said.
Bethany Nielson, who also voted for mayoral candidate Jim Gray and city council candidates Steve Harmon, Jason Stooks and Kyrk Taylor, cited her personal stake in Moscow’s business sector as a driving force behind her voting decisions.
“My husband and I both lost many incomes this last year, and so we’re trying to vote for candidates that are business-friendly so that we can recover economically,” Nielson said.
She also highlighted a need for transparency.
“More transparency on the part of city council, the mayor, that would be great. Accountability to their actual constituents,” Nielson said.
Voter Elizabeth Sloan cited Moscow’s alignment with her personal values as being the biggest motivating factor in her selection of candidates.
“I have never not voted in an election my whole life, so I always vote,” Sloan said. “I’m very concerned about the city council positions and keeping the values that I have in Moscow here maintained because we’re getting some undercurrents of ideas and I guess values that I don’t agree with.”
Sloan, who voted for mayoral candidate Art Bettge, as well as city council candidates Hailey Lewis and Julia Parker, also mentioned Moscow’s water scarcity and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as additional factors influencing her decisions on election day.
“A lot of the candidates seem to talk about water issues, which is important,” she said. “Certainly, our health safety is a concern, so doing what science proves is valuable.”
Vanessa Anthony-Stevens cited the need for appropriate public health measures as a key issue for her heading into Election Day.
“There’s some pretty crazy people who are running for office, so I was paying attention to which ones I didn’t want to vote for,” Anthony-Stevens said. “I think things like attending to public health, public safety in ways that are reasonable and informed, meaning potentially supporting … things like reasonable mask mandates and working across many perspectives have been pretty important to me.”
Anthony-Stevens added that local elections being overlooked plays a crucial role for her when it comes to voting.
“These elections are for people in our school boards and our local city council members, so while this doesn’t get a lot of attention, I think it’ll flashbang,” Anthony-Stevens said. “I’d love to see everybody voting for their local officials.”
Elyce Kinzer, who voted for mayoral candidate Art Bettge and city council candidates Hailey Lewis, Julia Parker and Kyrk Taylor, cited government experience and local investment as the primary considerations when making her voting decisions.
“I chose some candidates because they seemed to have more experience, but other candidates it was obvious they were invested in local politics, so I thought that was also important,” Kinzer said.
Kinzer, who is a student at the University of Idaho, mentioned that while some issues weren’t of immediate concern for her, she looked to candidates that were addressing Moscow’s biggest problems with clear solutions.
“For me, in my immediate bubble, housing and water aren’t super important, but reading stances on the issues … (looking at) people who were obviously trying to find solutions for development in the future, I was like, ‘Okay, that’s a good thing,’” she said.
Alyson Roy, an assistant professor of ancient history at UI, cited the maintenance of a university mask mandate as her biggest concern heading into Election Day.
“Mostly I’m in favor of continuing the mask mandate, as a faculty member here that is important to me,” Roy said. “I was also sort of voting trying to be against the sort of extension of Christ Church into city council.”
Roy, who voted for mayoral candidate Art Bettge and city council candidates Hailey Lewis and Julia Parker, noted that the busyness of the past year has narrowed her list of key issues heading into the election.
“This has been a really overwhelming semester, so I didn’t pay as much attention,” she said. “Normally, energy and things like that are very important to me.”
Annie and Shawn Richards both came to vote as part of their civic duty.
“You lose the right to complain about politics if you haven’t voted in the first place,” Shawn Richards said.
Talking with neighbors about the issues discussed by the candidates helped them decide on who to vote for.
“We have a neighbor who is a little quick consultant. We talked to him because we really love Moscow and think it’s important to be engaged citizens,” Annie Richards said. “Maybe it’s time for a few tweaks to what’s happening, politically in Moscow.”
Adrian Schless-Meier has voted in every election since turning 18.
“I think local elections are really important. They’re the things that determine how our lives go.” Schless-Meier said.
Finding information on candidates was a source of difficulty, Schless-Meier stated.
“I looked at a lot of candidates’ profiles on Facebook,” Schless-Meier said. “So, a lot of candidate-specific information and then some information from the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.”
Royce McCandless and Daniel V. Ramirez can be reached at [email protected]