What you need to know with primaries approaching

FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) – With primary elections approaching later this year, voter groups are actively working to educate voters.

“Ignorance is a tool and like any tool it can be used as a weapon, and far too many people in our society are using ignorance as a weapon and the only way we can fight that is by fighting ignorance, education is the key,” Fargo City Commission Candidate Will Thompson said.

“Our mission is to educate voters about the candidates and what they’re voting on. We hold public information events like this. We chose this topic this month because the last couple years there has been kind of misinformation about elections and how they work and especially I think because people don’t understand exactly how elections are run or how secure it is,” Chapter President of the League of Women Voters of the Red River Valley Ashley Ladury Hrichena said.

We saw absentee ballots in last year’s elections more than any other year previous. Some wonder if those trends will continue or with the loosening of Covid-19 restrictions we’ll see more in-person voters.

“I think that will be interesting to see if it happens again. I think obviously in 2020 a lot of people voted absentee for the first time that never had before, just for safety reasons so I guess we’ll see this year if it’s the same thing,” Ladury Hrichena said.

There is also a fairly new voting system in Fargo.

“We have what’s called an approval voting system so that means that as for as many candidates you approve of you can vote for,” Thompson said.

Not everyone may be a fan of the new system.

“I think that um we’re going to continue to see a change, the data that I’ve seen in 2018 the year before the system was put into place we were getting one point seven votes per ballot for two seats, so everybody gets two votes and now in 2020 we only saw about two point three votes per ballot,” Thompson said.

Primaries in North Dakota are on Jun. 14 and Aug. 9 in Minnesota.