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General Overview
The primary objective for Vote Smart is to provide the essential tools that American citizens need when selecting their representatives and monitoring their job performances. Along with Public Statements, Issue Positions, Campaign Finances, Key Votes, and Profiles, the Special Interest Groups (SIGs) Program is one of the six major arms of the Vote Smart Voter Self-Defense System that provides citizens with the facts they need to evaluate officials and candidates seeking office so that they can make an informed choice when voting.Special Interests are influencing politics more than they ever have, but not just on the financial side of things. Many special interest groups also publish valuable ratings and/or endorsements for candidates and current officials. Most ratings evaluate current and former officials based on their voting records on legislation that pertains to that interest. Endorsements are meant for both officials and candidates and allow a group to give their seal of approval. These two evaluations of candidates and officials are vital to voters because they directly approve or disapprove of a candidate or official's stance and/or actions on a specific issue.
To create a comprehensive database of ratings and endorsements published by interests, the SIGs Sub-Department actively covers over 1,700 special interest groups. Each piece of data is categorized and tagged so that ratings and endorsements can be sorted accordingly to their relevant issues. For the SIGS Sub-Department, the database is updated constantly throughout the year depending on primary and general election dates.
What you will be doing:
You will be working on collecting and translating ratings and endorsements of federal and state level politicians from Special Interest Groups.Why your work is important:
Ratings and endorsements by special interest groups helps the average citizen understand how their elected officials represent them on issues.In general, special interest groups represent a biased or partisan stance. Vote Smart collects performance evaluations from various special interest groups who provide them, regardless of issue or bias. Most ratings and endorsements reflect how often members of Congress or State Legislators have voted with the group's preferred position on legislation that the group considers key in their area. 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.
This information is extremely useful for voters looking for direction on who to vote for because special interest groups often have clear political alignments on a specified range of issues. For instance, a voter that values a certain position on gun issues might look to the NRA ratings and endorsements set to help determine who to vote for. The NRA does all the nitty gritty research regarding relevant laws and speeches so that the voter can rely on the rating for information. More specifically, people don't have to digest a lot of data in order to make an informed decision. Every scorecard and set of endorsements our department puts on Vote Smart's website contains valuable information, often on hundreds of elected officials. That said, an average citizen could potentially be more well-informed by getting to acknowledge the data we provide. Get pumped!
What you will learn:
- the role and influence of special interest groups in the political process
- the missions and policy positions of various special interest groups
- diverse methodologies of rating scorecards
- resources for ratings and endorsements and how to access them
- data cleaning and re-modelling
