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BallotReady146 karma

This is one of the things we struggle with too. We find that very few school board candidates have much of a web presence, and judges like to keep their web presence balanced without speaking to their judicial opinions.

Our current research process is is limited to reporting what candidates share about themselves on their campaign websites. However, we've found that local newspapers and outlets have done questionnaires or interviews with local candidates, which could help in your research. We'll be investigating how we can add these resources to our site in the future. - David

BallotReady31 karma

So glad we were able to be a resource for you! - David

BallotReady27 karma

Thanks for this thoughtful question - not at all off-topic! We source explanations (e.g. “A yes vote means…” and “A no vote means…”) for propositions that pertain to cities and counties with a population over 100k. For cities and counties with a population of over 50k, we will source the measure text but may not be able to go into more detail on what a yes or no vote means. Because there is not a national standard for how voters are educated about propositions, our sources also vary across the country. You’re correct that in California, our explanations relied heavily on the voter guide as it is a reliable source of nonpartisan information for a state with so many voters in it!

In terms of learning more about the arguments for particular propositions: news organizations may potentially have more in-depth coverage about these topics than the state-wide voter guide can cover -- I’m thinking details like interviews with advocates for/against certain measures, etc.

Lastly, in terms of your own advocacy for informed voter guides: I would recommend using the shareable ballot feature of our site! You can add reasons why you support or oppose a certain ballot measure and provide further context to your friends and followers. - Louisa

BallotReady19 karma

Our data is sourced first and foremost from local election officials. We always start working from official lists of candidates and positions up for election.

From there we primarily consider these different sources of information in an attempt to accurately portray the candidate in the way they present themselves to the public: candidate campaign websites, campaign Facebook pages, campaign Twitter profiles, and LinkedIn pages. We do this for two reasons. First, our mission is to aggregate information to help voters make their own decisions. Second, we link to our sources of information so that an interested voter can always examine the source website for themselves.

-David

BallotReady17 karma

In general, we try to stick with official resources as much as possible so that we're not editorializing our personal views on ballot measures. When states like CA put out voter guides, we use that as our information source. We recognize that these can be written in a manner that's less than transparent, but we prefer those official resources over us writing summaries and missing a major point.

In other states, where comprehensive voter guides aren't provided, we do source yes/no arguments from advocacy groups or op-eds on both sides of the issue to provide more context to voters. - David