First of all, Primary Elections are where our candidates are chosen. And in order to vote in a primary in Maryland, you need to be registered in a political party. Beyond that, there are some related reasons to get registered and get involved.

Registering with a party informs you about the candidates. • Have you paid close enough attention to your elected officials between elections? Or, do you let campaign promises be your primary guide to voting? • Would you know whether a candidate has done enough homework to understand the issues affecting the level of government at which he/she aspires to be elected? • Can you tell whether a candidate has a personal agenda driving his/her candidacy? • Would you know whether promises made during a campaign are possible or probable?

Politics is a Team Sport. • Networking is a large part of any election process. • Electing the best representation for the citizens of the city, county, state or nation requires being informed. • Each party knows who of the filed candidates has the greatest potential to serve the electorate and each party knows who of the filed candidates has the strongest possibility to succeed in the election. • Party members have better access to that information.

Registering Helps You Strategically. • The other party has a vested interest in keeping our candidates from succeeding. • Members of the other party will actually support with money to campaigns of weak candidates to help them make it through the primary. They also will spread partisan misinformation to their friends on the opposite side: good for the weak candidate and bad through creating “rumors” against the stronger candidates. • They will also challenge their own people that they feel have compromised too often. State of Maryland has a larger Democratic base; local Republicans know they need to give a little to make progress for Washington County.

We Need your Help and your Energy. • The United Democrats of Washington County spent two and a half years putting this organization together and supporting it with our personal funds and investment of time. • We want to grow our membership, but more importantly we want to grow the Democratic presence in Washington County. • Numbers matter to elected officials. Right now the County Commissioners and all of our state delegate and senate representatives are Republican and they think they don’t need to listen to 33,000 of their citizens. We need to show them that we matter.