VoteEasy Tool Guide
Basic Description: VoteEasy (VE) is our Presidential & Congressional candidate matching tool that enables voters to find their "political soulmate" by answering the same questions we ask the candidates through the Political Courage Test. As a user fills out their answers to the questions contained in the Political Courage Test, the tool updates in real time to display the level of agreement between the user and the candidates they may vote on.
How To Use VoteEasy:
- Go to votesmart.org/voteeasy (when there are active and released federal elections)
- Select which office you are interested in: Presidential or Congressional (depending on which is available)
- If Congressional, select a State & Congressional District, OR type in a zip code ("map view")
- Start answering the questions on the top of the screen to see which candidates agree/disagree with the positions you select ("lawn view")
- Candidate yard signs will move closer to you in agreement or further away based on disagreement
- Click on a candidate's yard sign to see more research, including issue positions, biographical info, interest group ratings & endorsements, campaign finances, and voting record ("candidate view")
Source of VE "Soul Mates": The issue position data that powers VoteEasy is drawn from two sources:
1. Candidates' Political Courage Test answers - If a candidates takes the Political Courage Test, those answers are what power the tool.
2. Issue Position Research - If a candidate fails to take the Political Courage Test, our Issue Positions team researches the candidate's public record to determine where the candidate stands on the issues. This data will populate VE the same way candidate answers do, but only if the candidate's direct answer is not available.
Other VE Data
The biographical information, interest group ratings & endorsements, campaign finances, and voting records that populate the "candidate view" are delivered via our public API ("webapi"). This process utilizes various documented methods and UndocumentedAPIMethods.
The selection of specific ratings/endorsements and voting records is based upon the relevant election year's StandardizedEvidenceforVoteEasy, which is built collaboratively by the Research Departments.
History of VE
VE was originally built in 2010 by a contractor (Periscopic) in Flash. You can view a video of legacy VE here. The development of VE, along with the decline in candidate PCT response rates, led to the development of the Issue Positions program, ensuring Vote Smart had candidate positions even in lieu of candidate responses. You can read more about the history of VE and VoteEasyLessonsLearned.
With the decline of Flash support on modern browsers, including mobile, Vote Smart and a contractor (Grok) developed a new version of the app in React in 2018. This application is built in responsive design to be useful on mobile and desktops.
The relevant GitHub repo is located here.
