The Research Departments:
The Research Departments covers the bulk of the data on our site. They collect, organize, and check an immense amount of data that will help to inform the public about candidates and elected officials. The Research Departments are separated into 2 distinct Departments, each with its own Director: Elections and Officials. These 2 Departments focus primarily on either candidates and elections research or officials research. Staff and interns will work primarily in a single research area, and learn more about the specific processes and protocol for research in that program. Each research Department, and research programs within each, are outlined below:
The Elections Department:
Elections Monitoring is responsible for making sure that, at all times, our website reflects who will be on the ballot for each state and federal election nationwide. This ensures that voters are provided with a complete snapshot of who is running for each office. It is their responsibility to track and update every federal, statewide, and state legislative election, gather and maintain candidate lists, and administer the processing of primary, general, and special election results. In order to ensure the complete accuracy of our elections processing, staff must also familiarize themselves with the election law in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.
Political Resources
In preparation for elections, we also provide information on Election Resources: Ballot Measures, Voter Registration Information, Political Parties, and contact information for Local Election Offices.City/County Officials
The City/County specialty involves updating the rosters and contact information for tens of thousands of local officials. This is a valuable service that Vote Smart provides, as many of these officials and their contact information cannot be found elsewhere on the internet. Vote Smart collects contact information for elected city officials serving in cities with populations above 29,000 and all 3,066 counties.
The first step to connecting citizens to their government is making it easy for them to find out who their representatives actually are, what their roles are, and how to contact them. Researchers for this program are responsible for making sure that at any given time, our roster of tens of thousands of officials mirrors those currently in office. In addition, they make sure that these representatives have proper and up-to-date biographical information, office information (including leadership positions and committees), and contact information. Federal and State Representatives are perhaps the most-viewed subject on our website. Updates are done for current federal and state officials throughout the year, due to ever-changing rosters. This area of specialty may collaborate with Elections Monitoring and with the Political Courage Test Programs, who update biographical and contact information for candidates during election years.
While we do display campaign finance information for federal and state-level candidates, we do not collect this information ourselves. Through partnerships with OpenSecrets (Center for Responsive Politics - CRP) for federal data, and FollowTheMoney (National Institute for Money in State Politics - NIMSP) for state data, we match unique candidate identification numbers from our own database, and our partners’ databases together. This allows us, through an API structure, to display up-to-date finance information for these candidates on our website.
The Political Courage Test is a test of candidates’ willingness to tell citizens their positions on the issues. The test asks candidates specifically, "Are you willing to honorably tell the nation where you stand on the issues you may face if elected by answering questions that are most important to voters?" Those in the Political Courage Test program are on the forefront of providing information to the public about how their candidates really stand on the issues.
Political Courage Test Creation:
The Political Courage Tests are developed from thorough research as to what are the most important and relevant issues to the American people and also likely to come up in the next legislative session. In order to construct specific questions, researchers investigate the issue areas broadly, incorporating national and local polling data, the majority, minority, and third party platforms, State of the Union and Response speeches, State of the State and Response speeches, legislative agendas, and media coverage. Researching the issue areas broadly allows for the specific issues, on which questions will be based, to naturally emerge. The issues proposed to be included in the Political Courage Test are then reviewed by over 200 leading political scientists, members of the media and Vote Smart’s Founding Board. We develop separate versions of the Political Courage Test for different offices: Presidential, Congressional, and State-specific. In constructing the actual test, every effort is made to make sure that test questions are free of bias.
Political Courage Test Administration:
Political Courage Test Administrators serve as liaisons between candidates and Vote Smart, in an effort to get candidates to tell the public their positions on the issues. These efforts are essential to improving the return rate for the Political Courage Test, our flagship program. They mail, email, and phone candidates to inform them about the Political Courage Test, and process all incoming biographical Forms and Political Courage Tests from candidates.
The Political Courage Tests are developed from thorough research as to what are the most important and relevant issues to the American people and also likely to come up in the next legislative session. In order to construct specific questions, researchers investigate the issue areas broadly, incorporating national and local polling data, the majority, minority, and third party platforms, State of the Union and Response speeches, State of the State and Response speeches, legislative agendas, and media coverage. Researching the issue areas broadly allows for the specific issues, on which questions will be based, to naturally emerge. The issues proposed to be included in the Political Courage Test are then reviewed by over 200 leading political scientists, members of the media and Vote Smart’s Founding Board. We develop separate versions of the Political Courage Test for different offices: Presidential, Congressional, and State-specific. In constructing the actual test, every effort is made to make sure that test questions are free of bias.
Political Courage Test Administration:
Political Courage Test Administrators serve as liaisons between candidates and Vote Smart, in an effort to get candidates to tell the public their positions on the issues. These efforts are essential to improving the return rate for the Political Courage Test, our flagship program. They mail, email, and phone candidates to inform them about the Political Courage Test, and process all incoming biographical Forms and Political Courage Tests from candidates.
Issue Positions is Vote Smart's answer to candidates' decreasing willingness to complete the Political Courage Test. Issue Positions researchers investigate candidates' public record to infer responses to the most salient questions on the Political Courage Test. These determinations are subjective, however each piece of information undergoes intense scrutiny before an inferred response can be determined. Specifically, Issue Positions researchers sift through PCT's and NPAT's from years past, legislation, interest group evaluations, candidate surveys, debate transcripts, pledges, speeches, and public statements to pinpoint a candidate's position on key Political Courage Test questions. This information is displayed on our main website, and highlighted on our VoteEasy tool. This tool enables citizens to quickly determine which candidates are most like them, without having to sift through our dense databases of information.
The Officials Department:
Vote Smart collects performance evaluations (scorecards) from special interest groups, regardless of issue or bias. Most ratings reflect how often members of Congress (federal ratings) or state legislators (state ratings) have voted with the organization's preferred position on legislation that the group considers key in their area. In general, ratings from special interest groups represent a biased or partisan stance. Some groups may select votes that tend to favor members of one political party over another, rather than choosing votes based solely on issue-related concerns.
Despite their bias, special interest group ratings can help indicate where an incumbent has stood on a particular set of issues in the past few years. They can be especially useful when ratings by groups on all sides of an issue are compared. Web site links, if available, and descriptions of the organizations offering ratings are accessible by clicking on the name of the group.
Despite their bias, special interest group ratings can help indicate where an incumbent has stood on a particular set of issues in the past few years. They can be especially useful when ratings by groups on all sides of an issue are compared. Web site links, if available, and descriptions of the organizations offering ratings are accessible by clicking on the name of the group.
Vote Smart collects public statements to enable voters to find what a candidate or elected official has said about any issue, not just those covered by Key Votes, the Political Courage Test, SIGs, or other programs. Vote Smart collects statements by the president, vice president, governors, members of Congress, and current candidates. The keyword-searchable database is updated daily with floor statements, position papers, press releases, editorials, letters, television transcripts, issue positions, and more. Researchers are responsible for collecting, classifying, formatting, and inputting these statements.
Speeches researchers also collect fact-check articles from our fact-checking partners (PolitiFact, Fact-Check.org, and The Washington Post Fact Checker) that correspond directly with statements in our database. Statements that have been found to be mostly or entirely false are marked on our live site with a BULL logo, and users can see how many times a candidate has been caught in a lie by referring to the BULL counter at the top of certain candidate pages.
The Legislative Research program tracks legislation from Congress and all 50 state legislatures. Researchers select key votes based on strict criteria and summarize the bills in nonpartisan, easier-to-understand terms so that all Americans can understand what a particular vote or piece of legislation actually means. Rather than taking all votes on every bill from a legislature, Key Votes selects bills votes that will be helpful to our users when they look at a candidate’s voting record.
Key Votes selections and summaries are reviewed by our network of advisors. These advisors are experts on politics on their state, and they provide guidance on avoiding partisan language and ensuring comprehensive coverage.
