Your Candidates, Your Issues: Data You Need to Cast Your Best Vote

• As the midterm elections approach, many voters feel that it’s hard to come by reliable information about candidates’ positions and the broader issues they seek to address.
• This new Voter Center is the first of its kind to show the public positions of U.S. House and Senate candidates in the context of data on those issues.
• USAFacts founder and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer explains:

Details

We’ve partnered with USAFacts, a non-profit, non-partisan civic initiative aimed at making government numbers more available, accessible, and understandable, to bring you a platform that lets you search for your district and candidates using your home address.

The Voter Center will then present every candidate on your ballot, each campaign’s stated positions on a range of issues, and curated government data on how the country is doing on those issues.

You can also click through to check if you’re registered to vote on Tuesday, November 6th, and find additional ways to become civically engaged.

Why this Voter Center?

In USAFacts’ 2018 State of the Facts Poll, 61 percent of Americans said the primary way they formed opinions on policies was by researching and finding data about an issue, compared to 54 percent who said their values guided their opinions.

The poll also found that 80 percent of Americans are concerned that election information is biased.

USAFacts – and by extension, this Voter Center – relies exclusively on publicly available government data sources. It makes no judgments, nor prescribes specific policies. Whether government money is spent wisely or not, whether our quality of life is improving or getting worse – that’s for you to decide.

Hopefully, this information will spur serious, reasoned, and informed debate on the purpose and functions of government. Such debate is vital to our democracy.

Countable founder Bart Myers weighs in:

"It's never been more important for Americans to be engaged with their government. But while taking action is important, it's essential that voters have access to digestible, non-partisan, and trustworthy information to inform their choices."

Armed with such information, you can cast your best vote.

What do you think?

Visit the Voter Center to see how your candidates and the data stack up against the issues that matter to you. Tell your reps what you think, then share your thoughts below.

—Sara E. Murphy

(Photo Credit: iStock.com / THEPALMER)