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I've been impressed with the results of searching for the word "scandal" alongside each candidate name.
I've learned about racist incumbent judges, administrators being investigated for embezzlement, and folks with a history of slashing funding to things I care about like education and fire protection.
The league of women voters does a great job of presenting information and comparisons on each candidate. They also have a tool to help you make a ballot so you can remember your choices.
Thanks
I usually start with Calmatters. They tend to have good writeups for CA ballots when I’m looking for how candidates feel about specific policies.
Then I go to my local independent newspaper, which runs interviews with all major local candidates. I usually have a pretty good idea of who I’m going for by the time I read the interviews, but they’ll often put me the over the edge for a particular candidate and help me finalize my decision.
https://vote411.org https://ballotpedia.org
I use these sites to see what races are on my local ballot and to get an idea about who is running. If you need more info, you might search on some of your local news stations or newspaper websites.
For the major races, like President or Congress, hopefully you have already decided by now.
Ballotpedia is fantastic for most of our elections as the summaries are well done and accurate. If you can’t read legalese, you’ll love their amendment, etc summaries.
Yep, used that site for the local stuff to trace back candidate histories and how they answered questions. If you're ever a candidate for anything, be sure to make some effort to fill some of that stuff out, as people are looking for something to work with. A blank profile with no idea of who you are vs. someone who has at least a line or two makes a big difference. These non-political party positions are hard enough to make choices, we need more than a name to work with.
Also, a huge help on the amendment side. I had no clue which way to go until I got some decent background on what the point was, and who had pushed for it to be on the ballot. Follow the money.
Always follow the money. Great advice.
Huge fan of both of these, I came to the comments to see if someone already said vote411.org. Really helpful for a brief but thorough snapshot
Donald Trump has openly said that he wants to be a dictator.
I mostly just read the wikipedia pages for each candidate.
canidates are easy. judicial retention is the hard part. https://www.injusticewatch.org/
Helpful, thanks.
Check a sample ballot so you know what races are up for a vote. Don't let the first time you see a candidate be at the voting location.
My government publishes a booklet of candidate statements and details of ballot measures that gets sent out to all voters. Candidates can lie in their statements so don't trust the ones who sound agreeable, but I can usually rule out more than a few based on them strongly supporting issues I'm against. This lets me rule out the worst choices for me and focus my research on a smaller set of candidates/races where the choice isn't as obvious. Check candidate websites for a similar statement. Focus on ruling out people you strongly disagree with. Bookmark the ones that need more digging.
Then I tend to check voter guides published by news organizations and charities with a similar lean as me. I don't follow them directly, but they give me a sense of who people with similar leanings support. This has helped me discover some candidates who were directly misleading in their statements and didn't have the support of the people they claim agree with them. If any names in the voting guide surprise you, dig deeper on them.
Party affiliation is unfortunately meaningful in federal elections, and many top level state elections as well, but avoid voting straight ticket based on party. There are often local elections where party affiliation isn't as important. It may matter if my governer is Red or Blue ,but it probably matters less what my Coroner is (...I'll admit though that my feelings on this are changing in recent years. I'm still against straight ticket voting because it's important to check each race individually.) Try to find a basic 2 sentence or so description of each position that's up for election so you know what kind of power that position has. That will help you judge if a candidate's stances on certain issues matter for their position. It's great that my Coroner supports X but that's irrelevant to their job so I won't factor it in.
Finally I make sure to read the long form of every ballot measure or amendment. The short version almost always sounds appealing but often the long form uncovers really important nuances. Never just vote based on the short form, it's way too easy to sneak in really terrible policies by constructing an agreeable tagline.
I vote by mail, so usually once I get the packet, I'll just go through and research people. I won't lie, if I see someones political sign constantly with a candidate I don't like, I take them off the list without researching. There's at least one in my area that is always with Trump. Didn't even give her a Google search. I usually don't do it all at once, but I get it in before the deadline. 👍🏾
The Swedish state-run media puts out a very good comparison between all the parties each election year which I use to understand what position each party has. It's been generally easy to figure out which party is closest to me using that tool. It can be used for the three tiers of elections that we have in Sweden.
Other than that I try to look at polls to see whether it would be generally better for me to place a strategic vote on a party that is not my first choice.
a variety of independent news sources.
Wikipedia is notoriously susceptible to bias when it comes to history and politics and has a noted left center bias (according to researchers at Harvard, not my words).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_bias_on_Wikipedia
I'm not saying it's a terrible sources but it definitely should not be the last stop and anything controversial (or the lack thereof) isn't a meaningful indicator of whether or not something is actually true. Note the numerous examples of historical revisionism in the linked article.
I do research while voting from my desk, referencing online sources with the LoWV pamphlet. I got my ballot last Thursday and had it right back in the mailbox that evening.
If it's local city elections, it's difficult as the line between parties gets fuzzy. Some candidates have little to no info on their policies and such.
If I can't find anything about them at all, I won't vote for them. If they're hyper religious or make it their main focus of their campaign, I won't vote for them. Other than that, it's just a coin toss.
Larger elections like stare and national are a bit easier. If they have the letter R next to their name, it's safe to assume they're insane, evil, or both. It's become the norm these days. That makes it a choice between independants and democrats. I guess it comes down to which has better policies on issues I care about.
In Germany we have a site called Wahl-O-Mat (vote-o-mat) where you can answer questions on many issues and you can set how important they are for you and then you get a score of where all the parties stand on those issues.
That’s really cool
I don't vote in the US (fortunately?). You mainly vote for a party. There are 8 of them in the Parliament and none near 50% so they negotiate and eventually 50% of the MPs agree on a government and a prime minister.
We have various websites and news outlets that are mostly neutral that make "election compasses" that lets you answer a bunch of questions regarding various topics and sorts parties based on how close they match yours.
I'll take a closer look at the most aligned ones.
Wait for the party coolies to bring their goodies bags and pick the one I like most.
For local elections, I try and consult local papers covering the candidates.
I do not research specific candidates because I am not a member of a party or vote in the primaries (which requires registering for the party). I do keep an eye out in the news in case the Republicans are trying to put some misleading state constitution amendment or other shenannigans on the ballot.
My state doesn't do the voter roll purges so I don't bother checking that, but will if they start.
I check to see when the early in person voting opens and go as soon as I am able. If that isn't possible due to scheduling, my voting location is only a few minutes away and there has never been a line. Either way I vote against every Republican candidate because the whole party is corrupt and I don't really need to know exactly how terrible each one is.
Then I go home and hope the rest of the country is smarter than my state as the best possible outcome seems to be a moderate Dem governor and a slight chance at a national level Dem Representative as the Republican party has a stranglehold on pretty much everything else at the state level.
Keep my eye on the news, keep a list of promises they’ve made and crap they’ve done. Every incumbent will inevitably do crap, the question is whether they’ve tried to address those and whether they tried to solve any structural issues
Yes, generally I will look in my county newspaper for the less high profile races because they run short interviews with a lot of the down ballot candidates. Higher office candidates I'm generally familiar with long before the election
In addition to some sources others covered I like to listen to one or two interviews from local news orgs, you can learn a lot about what a politician values and prioritizes listening to them speak with little interruption, not for how well they speak but the content they consider important.
I get so drunk I don't know who I'm voting for!
This was a reference to an older Jay Foreman video on this topic, wasn't found as funny as I'd hoped.
In all seriousness I look up candidates and try to find several sources discussing them to attempt to avoid biases from one source. I like to see how they've voted as a representative in the past (if they were one). For voting on propositions I will look up what it does, the supporting and critical arguments, and then who supports and who doesn't support it. That's usually how I go about it.
