Voting makes me feel stupid

There are more than 2 candidates for President? What?!

"What do you mean there are five (or six?) people running for the office of President of the United States? How could I not know this? I mean, how can they call it a presidential debate and not invite all the candidates?!?"

And this was the beginning of my several-hour visit to the Land of Feeling Stupid while I blundered my way through the Oregon voter's pamphlet, trying to decipher titles, platforms, measures and explanatory statements.

You'd think that living in Oregon, what with our vote-by-mail system, voting would be a snap. You'd think that, in order not to vote, you'd have to be a) seriously negligent, b) a missing person, c) mailing address-less, or d) dead. But the truth of it is, I only vote in presidential election years.

Now wait, before you start throwing stones--Ow! Hey! Just hear me out, will you?! As counter-intuitive as it may sound, the reason I don't normally vote is because I take voting as a civic duty very seriously.

The thing is, I really, really, really want to make informed voting decisions based on accurate information. But in order to do that, I need to know the functions of the political offices, what skills and experience are necessary to perform well in those offices, whether the candidates meet the criteria, what the text of the measures mean, what problem(s) a particular measure is trying to solve, and what the likely long- and short-term consequences of the measure passing or not passing would be.
There are several barriers to this informed approach to voting.

1. There are no job descriptions in the voter's pamphlet. I mean, come on. How are we supposed to pick the best candidate for an office whose function is a mystery? What exactly does the East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District Director At Large 1 do? How about a City Commissioner? While we're at it, what's the official job description of a State Representative or U.S. Senator? Or, for that matter, the President of the United States? I mean sure, I have a vague idea, but can you tell me the exact scope of power and responsibility of any of those positions?
2. At the bottom of every candidate's statement, in little bold print, appears the sentence: "The above information has not been verified for accuracy by the State of Oregon." Really? So people can say whatever the hell they want about other candidates, they can lie or mislead or misquote all they want, and you're just going to print it? The candidates make claims about their own education and experience and about their opponents' track records. But how do I know it's true? Two candidates for same office both claim to have the support of the Sierra Club and the same teachers' union. Is that even possible?
3. A similar disclaimer appears below the statements in favor of or in opposition to each measure, informing voters that the State of Oregon takes no responsibility for the veracity of anything written about any of the measures. And of course the statements in favor of or in opposition to the measures contain conflicting information. How do I know whom to believe?

In order to feel like I was truly making an informed decision with accurate information, I would have to spend days--or even weeks--researching. I'd be tempted to follow the URLs given in the voter's pamphlet, but of course there's no guarantee that the information on those sites is accurate either. As bad as it may sound, I just don't have the kind of time it would take to feel like I'm truly informed about the candidates or measures.

So...I end up guessing. This does not feel like responsible citizenship. It feels like haphazard oval-filling that may have enormous unwanted consequences. I'm not proud of it. I don't like it. I also don't know what to do about it that doesn't involve spending obscene amounts of time trying to track down job descriptions and sort out the lies from the truthiness from the truth. It seems like such a hopeless business. If you can't trust your own voter's pamphlet, who can you trust?

My very imperfect solution, therefore, is not to vote. I suppose my hope, as unfounded as it may be in any reality, is that the people who do vote are more informed than I am. That they have somehow found the magic solution to all this uncertainty.