A group of us (democracy-passionate friends) just launched OpenBallot, a platform of 40+ voter guides. The goal is to save you research time by showing you all the endorsements and explanations you care about in one place. You can use this to fill out your ballot, which is private by default. You can then share with friends or publish your views on our platform.
The site is our first prototype; if you're in SF, please try it and share your feedback! We're hoping to use this to eventually scale to all over the country.
I've thought about doing basically this exact project a number of times. The biggest thing I'd wanna change is to not focus on the guides so much. Lots of organizations are shy about making an endorsement so guides can often be pretty barebones. A much more useful view, imo, would be to allow users to select a number of voter guides, and then view a full ballot. With badges by the choices endorsed by whatever guides they have activated
>Lots of organizations are shy about making an endorsement so guides can often be pretty barebones.
Then that's a bad voter guide. A voter guide should be about offering context and not just a binary cheat sheet of endorse/not endorse, yes/no, red/blue, etc.
A good guide should explain the issues (from the specific perspective of the group preparing the guide) regardless of the ultimate suggestion. The primary guide I used (for LA not SF) was over 60 pages to explain their perspective and reasoning on everything. It also used language like "enthusiastically endorse", "endorse", "strongly recommend", "recommend", and "no recommendation" to give degrees to their suggestions.
I would personally ignore any of the guides on OpenBallot which provide no explanation for their votes. It might even be a good idea for OpenBallot to require explanations. What value is someone's recommendation if they can't tell you why that is their recommendation?
I'm happy to share it, but I'll admit I didn't include the name in my original comment because the source will get some people riled up. I was referring to the guide from LA's chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.[1] I think it stands up as an example of an extremely well put together guide regardless of your political affiliation.
As a progressive person, I used a combination of that and The Knock LA's voter guide[2] to get the progressive perspective and then I combined that with Ballotpedia[3] to get a non-partisan view, see more mainstream endorsements, and campaign finance details (California often has too many confusing ballot measures, so when in doubt looking at who paid how much to support a proposition is my usual tiebreaker).
Yeah, that's what we do! Try logging in and following your favorite guides; from there you'll see your "ballot view" that (I think) describes exactly what you're after? More whitespace than I'd like (compact view or die!), but I was outnumbered ;-)
This is really cool and I appreciate the concept. I was pleased to see a friend’s voter guide listed however I was sad to see that the opinions that he had thoughtfully articulated in the email version of his guide are not present here. This is really a loss since he had provided good reasons. If I am being honest, this tool is only helpful if it offers detailed justifications for every position.
The best aggregator is the rubbish bin. I’ve been pulling this trash off the front of my gate for a while and it just now occurred to me I should start invoicing the responsible parties for the disposal charges and referring them to the City for littering.
I think that a tally of endorsements or partisan affiliation is counter productive. That is just a bias toward whichever side had the most interest groups pushing an agenda. Democracy works best when people think for themselves. We defer to the majority opinion after all the votes are tallied and not before.
A group of us (democracy-passionate friends) just launched OpenBallot, a platform of 40+ voter guides. The goal is to save you research time by showing you all the endorsements and explanations you care about in one place. You can use this to fill out your ballot, which is private by default. You can then share with friends or publish your views on our platform.
The site is our first prototype; if you're in SF, please try it and share your feedback! We're hoping to use this to eventually scale to all over the country.
How can people contribute new guides?
I've thought about doing basically this exact project a number of times. The biggest thing I'd wanna change is to not focus on the guides so much. Lots of organizations are shy about making an endorsement so guides can often be pretty barebones. A much more useful view, imo, would be to allow users to select a number of voter guides, and then view a full ballot. With badges by the choices endorsed by whatever guides they have activated
>Lots of organizations are shy about making an endorsement so guides can often be pretty barebones.
Then that's a bad voter guide. A voter guide should be about offering context and not just a binary cheat sheet of endorse/not endorse, yes/no, red/blue, etc.
A good guide should explain the issues (from the specific perspective of the group preparing the guide) regardless of the ultimate suggestion. The primary guide I used (for LA not SF) was over 60 pages to explain their perspective and reasoning on everything. It also used language like "enthusiastically endorse", "endorse", "strongly recommend", "recommend", and "no recommendation" to give degrees to their suggestions.
I would personally ignore any of the guides on OpenBallot which provide no explanation for their votes. It might even be a good idea for OpenBallot to require explanations. What value is someone's recommendation if they can't tell you why that is their recommendation?
Care to share the LA guide?
I'm happy to share it, but I'll admit I didn't include the name in my original comment because the source will get some people riled up. I was referring to the guide from LA's chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.[1] I think it stands up as an example of an extremely well put together guide regardless of your political affiliation.
As a progressive person, I used a combination of that and The Knock LA's voter guide[2] to get the progressive perspective and then I combined that with Ballotpedia[3] to get a non-partisan view, see more mainstream endorsements, and campaign finance details (California often has too many confusing ballot measures, so when in doubt looking at who paid how much to support a proposition is my usual tiebreaker).
[1] - https://dsa-la.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/DSA-LA-2024-Ge...
[2] - https://knock-la.com/the-knock-la-progressive-voter-guide-fo...
[3] - https://ballotpedia.org/California_elections,_2024
These are great suggestions; thank you!
Yeah, that's what we do! Try logging in and following your favorite guides; from there you'll see your "ballot view" that (I think) describes exactly what you're after? More whitespace than I'd like (compact view or die!), but I was outnumbered ;-)
Two options to contribute new guides: 1) Tweet https://x.com/OpenBallotApp with the guide URL, or 2) join our Discord and post in #guides-wishlist: https://discord.gg/mzubN2v4
We'd love to hear from you!
This is really cool and I appreciate the concept. I was pleased to see a friend’s voter guide listed however I was sad to see that the opinions that he had thoughtfully articulated in the email version of his guide are not present here. This is really a loss since he had provided good reasons. If I am being honest, this tool is only helpful if it offers detailed justifications for every position.
Nice idea. Oregon has fantastic voter pamphlets with candidate-supplied bios, as well as for/against ads that people can buy.
Sample: https://www.washingtoncountyor.gov/elections/current-voters-...
The best aggregator is the rubbish bin. I’ve been pulling this trash off the front of my gate for a while and it just now occurred to me I should start invoicing the responsible parties for the disposal charges and referring them to the City for littering.
Super neat!
A count at the top of each item would be cool (ie quick glance see counts of yes / no, maybe shaded by party affiliation?)
On mobile I wouldn’t miss follow profile / like comment, at least as a casual user when scrolling through a prop.
I think that a tally of endorsements or partisan affiliation is counter productive. That is just a bias toward whichever side had the most interest groups pushing an agenda. Democracy works best when people think for themselves. We defer to the majority opinion after all the votes are tallied and not before.
Awesome!
And everyone make sure you’re registered to vote: https://vote.gov/
So cool!