As a politically engaged citizen, I try to approach races for elected officials with a strong mixture of personal research, conversations with fellow Nevadans and whiskey. The last element, of course, is optional, but it doesn't hurt. It's not always easy or fun to figure out who to vote for and, more than that, it's painful to cast a ballot based on little more than name recognition, an unrelated identifier or, worse, eeny-meeny-ism. But we've …