Researching Candidates

Research ahead of time. Identify your values and try to match them with a candidate. Many states provide candidate information on their election office website.

You can also research the voting record of incumbent candidates–the candidates who are already holding office but are up for re-election–to find out if their past
votes align with your values.

On your ballot, there will likely be candidates that do not list a political affiliation–for example, the ones running for school board or other local seats. If you don’t have time to study up on all of them, choose a few of these races to research ahead of time. You can look up your address for a sample ballot using sites like BallotReady or Ballotpedia or
contact your state elections office.

Resources

A good place to start at the federal level is GovTrack, which is a nongovernmental website that shows you which committees your representatives and senators are a part of, how they voted on the floor and ratings from different advocacy organizations.

This site is a solid place for an overview of what you’ll be voting on and will give you a sample ballot after you type in your adress. It shows you the measures up for vote and the candidates running for election in your district.

Here you’ll answer a series of questions about your views on topics ranging from abortion to social security. As you answer each question, Vote Smart gives you a best match for both the House and Senate based on your views.

ProPublica tracks congressional votes, which means you can go through and see how a candidate has voted in everything they’ve ever voted on. It’s a great tool, but it’s only useful for candidates up for reelection.

Even if you’ve had no excuse to pick up a local newspaper or watch the local news in years, both are useful resources during election season. Local news channels will often host debates between state or local candidates, and while they’re a far cry from the production and excitement of the presidential debates, these local debates are arguably more useful.