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Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Politics LWV Launches Ambitious Election Website

Posted by Cienna Madrid on Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 2:55 PM

Good news for all you voters who live outside of our election endorsements' navel-gazey, two-block radius: The League of Women's Voters of Washington has launched a brand new online voters’ guide, Vote411.org, that exhaustively lists every candidate in every race in the state, along with pertinent ballot issues.

But unlike flipping through the phonebrick that is the Secretary of State voter's guide—which wasn't printed for the primaries—this site allows you to plug in your home address and receive a personalized ballot listing every candidate of every race you'll be voting on, along with candidate photos, bios, completed questionnaires, and even salary information.

"We invited all the state's 887 candidates to complete questionnaires designed for their specific races," explains League co-president Linnea Hirst, who says that on this trial run, only about 1/3 of the candidates complied. "It allows you to compare candidates and their priorities side-by-side. It's pretty slick."

The Shtranger
Click to enlarge.

The bad news is that the website is nonpartisan, which means you'll get no help sorting out the good candidates from the stupid. The good news is that most candidates sort of out themselves. (Take the batshit charm of perennial candidate Goodspaceguy's goodspaceviews.)

And once you're finished virtually filling out your ballot, you can print or email yourself a copy as a handy cheat sheet.

Basically, if you live in a county that didn't produce its own voter's guide for the primary, this site could be a ~~god~~gaiasend.

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Comments (5) RSS

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Speaking of assholes: You assholes have physical distribution with a much larger reach than your editorial notice. Without your help, I am going to be forced to vote for Dave Reichert, Mark Hargrove and some douche named Andy Massagli.

Thanks a lot SECB!

Posted by ...because The Supreme Ruler said so. on July 24, 2012 at 3:04 PM

You can get a progressive partisan voter's guide, listing info and endorsements, personalized for you in WA state at Fuse. http://progressivevotersguide.com/2012/w… To get it personalized you have to give them your email and zip code. But I think you can scroll through and find your district without having to sign up for anything, should you prefer.

Posted by Tracy on July 24, 2012 at 3:40 PM

I had a rare day off at home yesterday, and I spent a good chunk of it going through the voter guide. Goodspaceguy (other than his name) isn't even in the top 5 of crazy in that thing.

Posted by bleedingheartlibertarian on July 24, 2012 at 4:47 PM