I just went looking for a webpage that would guide me to the list of candidates running for office in the autumn 2020 general election, with links to sites that would discuss them. I was surprised: finding this information was not easy or obvious.
I thought that, for once, I would try to learn something about these people before election day. Nice idea but, wow, it’s a mess. Hopefully this page will help others who share my reactions.
Contents
How to Vote
How to Identify Candidates
How to Learn About Candidates
How I Chose My Preferred Candidates
Conclusion
How to Vote
Don’t assume that you can just show up and vote. There are rules and deadlines on how to register, where and when to vote, etc. Those rules may have changed in your location. For a state-by-state guide, try FiveThirtyEight. That site is considered relatively centrist, neutral, and balanced (i.e., not obviously liberal or conservative) (see e.g., AllSides, Ad Fontes, Reddit) or perhaps slightly left-leaning with high factuality (MediaBias/FactCheck).
The FiveThirtyEight site provides how-to links for each state on voting registration, voting early, in-person voting, requesting and submitting an absentee ballot, and other topics. USA.gov also provides pages on those topics.
USA.gov repeatedly advises that you contact your state’s election office website for the most accurate information. U.S. Vote Foundation also provides links to those state offices. See also Rock the Vote, Vote.gov, and U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
If your state allows voting by mail, I encourage doing so. It is easier, it protects you — not only against the coronavirus, but also against last-minute weirdness (e.g., they might close your local polling place for some reason, good or bad) — and it gives you time to learn something about the candidates.
But I would say, be careful. In my Republican-controlled state, the elections people took a month even to send me the form to request a ballot to vote by mail. I was very cautious about every step of the process, lest they seek to invalidate my ballot for trivial reasons.
There’s a lot of pressure to vote for someone. My personal view, which you may or may not agree with: I suggest not voting unless you know who and what you’re voting for. Don’t cancel out the vote of someone who really cares and who took the time to learn something about that specific contest. That voter may actually be choosing the candidate who will produce better results for you.
There is also the viewpoint expressed in the phrase, “Don’t vote — it only encourages them.” This is not an entirely crazy perspective, in an election where Gallup finds that one in four voters feel that neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump would make a good president. The main problem with that viewpoint is that one of the two is going to become president regardless, and voting is how that decision will be made.
How to Identify Candidates
For some voters, it is not necessary to know who the candidates are: all that matters is their political party. Ballotpedia provides a list of political parties in the U.S. (Ballotpedia is considered centrist and unbiased: see AllSides and MediaBias/FactCheck. In the following paragraphs, I provide links to the specific Ballotpedia webpages because some took a bit of effort to find.)
Straight-ticket voting means voting for the candidate of a favored party (a/k/a “ticket”) in every contest. So if you choose to cast a straight-line vote for, say, the Green Party, then you choose the Green Party candidate for president, and the Green Party candidate for the Senate, and so forth. Some states make this easy, by giving you a party-line lever (in a voting machine) or a box to click or check (on paper or computer ballots). Ballotpedia provides more information on straight-ticket voting.
If you don’t plan to choose your candidates based solely on their party — that is, if you want to know something about them — then the first step is to figure out who they are. Learning about candidates in U.S. general elections often starts at the top, with a focus on the U.S. presidency and Congress. There tends to be more public attention to these federal candidates because voters across the country recognize their names and have opinions on their qualifications. For instance, Ballotpedia considers about one-third of U.S. states to be congressional “battleground” states — meaning that elections for the U.S. Congress in those states may be especially close, or important on a national level. As an example of a nationally important congressional election, Ballotpedia says that the contest for Mitch McConnell’s seat (Republican – Kentucky) “will affect the partisan control of the U.S. Senate.” Non-Kentuckians may contribute a great deal of time and money to help re-elect or defeat an incumbent like McConnell in that sort of battleground contest.
To identify the candidates for the U.S. Congress in your state, Ballotpedia offers a map. Clicking on a state on that map leads to a page listing its senators and representatives. Senators represent the entire state in the U.S. Senate, but representatives represent only specific parts of the state in the U.S. House of Representatives.
To figure out which U.S. representative is yours, you have to know which U.S. congressional district you’re in. You may be able to get that with Ballotpedia’s Sample Ballot Lookup. Alternately, 270ToWin provides an interactive map that lets you zoom in on your area, with a separate map allowing a search for your location. This map may incidentally acquaint you with the bizarrely gerrymandered shapes of some districts.
On the state level, Ballotpedia provides state-specific information on elections for state executive officials, such as the governor and others further down the ballot (e.g., attorney general, secretary of state, public service commissioner). Ballotpedia also provides pages for the other two branches of government at the state level: legislative and judicial. In addition, Ballotpedia provides pages for state and local ballot measures (e.g., initiatives, like California’s famous Proposition 13 initiative in 1978) as well as mayoral and other elections in big cities, along with school board elections and political recall efforts.
Your state election office website may provide a list of names that will appear on your ballot. Being familiar with them could help you avoid being one of those voters who just chooses the first name appearing on the list. According to NPR, that position in the list has been found to increase a candidate’s votes by up to 20%. To reduce that unfairness, some states rotate the names randomly, from one county to the next.
In my case, the state’s website listed names for five different U.S. congressional districts, three different state senate districts, ten different state representative districts, 13 different judicial districts, three county commissioner precincts, and four county constable precincts. (Note: these districts and precincts are not the same as the U.S. congressional districts.) If I wanted to know who I was voting for — if I wanted to prepare an accurate, marked-up copy of the state’s printout, to take with me to a polling place — it was up to me to try to figure out who these people were. Fortunately, in all cases except the judicial districts, Ballotpedia’s Sample Ballot Lookup narrowed down the list to my particular districts and precincts.
How to Learn About Candidates
From the president on down, Ballotpedia’s Sample Ballot provides links for each candidate it names. These links lead to Ballotpedia’s own writeups about individual candidates. For instance, using Mitch McConnell again as an example, Ballotpedia’s page summarizes his prior experience, education, and achievements; states his net worth ($22M); and says a bit about this year’s battleground contest for his Senate seat.
If Ballotpedia’s Sample Ballot doesn’t work for you, you might be able to find an alternative that does much the same thing. iVoterGuide offered “My Ballot,” like Ballotpedia, but as of September 13 there was nothing on it, and no Voter Guide for the upcoming election. BallotReady had promise, and I did use their site, but they warned: “BallotReady is continuing to work to gather all elected officials nationwide and may not have gathered complete information for your area.” For the few candidates I did examine, BallotReady had obtained little information.
Beyond sites that offer a complete ballot for your location, it becomes a question of finding alternate sources of information that will not mislead you. This may be difficult. For example, Wikipedia provides pages offering varying degrees of detail on the 2020 U.S. elections as a whole, and on the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives elections, with links leading to further information. And yet, in the view of Conservapedia (obviously right-leaning), Wikipedia tends to be leftist, sometimes radically so. As another example, the League of Women Voters (LWV) takes pride in the longstanding nonpartisan stance of its public education division — and yet Wikipedia acknowledges that the LWV’s advocacy division “does support a variety of progressive public policy positions.” InfluenceWatch (rated moderately to strongly right-wing by MediaBias/FactCheck) says LWV “has been widely criticized for pushing left-leaning policies.” On its Vote411 website, the nonpartisan side of LWV offers “personalized voting information” about candidates in your specific location. Unfortunately, in my location, that page provided nothing.
LWV (i.e., SmartVoter and Newton) suggests that candidates’ leadership ability and their stances on the issues are the most important factors in deciding whom to vote for. Some voters care more about a candidate’s stance on issues; others are more concerned with his/her ability to lead, or his/her character or personality, even if they don’t always agree with where s/he leads. While it may be true that many candidates would say anything to win votes, in practice they tend to be at least somewhat limited by what their supporters can stomach, and by what their opponents will make of their words. Of course, nearly every political, economic, religious, cultural, and social group and demographic has its own hot topics and/or preferred beliefs. Many voters are inclined to just go along with dominant opinion in their preferred organization or group. For instance, political writers often talk about “the union vote” or “the evangelical vote.”
Back in January, Gallup (Hrynowski, 2020) (rated as centrist by AllSides) found that Americans felt the key issues (rated as “extremely important” by at least 25% of survey respondents) were, in descending order, healthcare, terrorism and national security, gun policy, education, the economy, immigration, climate change, abortion, and economic inequality, followed (at 23%) by the federal budget deficit, taxes, and race relations. Gallup may update that before the election. In July, Fortune (Goodkind, July 30) (rated as centrist by AllSides) said the top issues were the COVID-19 pandemic and public health, followed by the economy and race relations/racism. Pew Research Center (August 13) (rated as centrist by AllSides, though I have found Pew to be leftist on several issues for which I have examined their research) said that, in a June survey, at least 50% of voters considered the following issues very important, again in declining order: economy, healthcare, Supreme Court appointments, pandemic, violent crime, foreign policy, gun policy, race and ethnic inequality, and immigration, with economic inequality following at 49%.
Many sites provide guidance on specific issues. For instance, Forbes and Classpass claim that IssueVoter provides nonpartisan information on specific issues, though I found it more oriented toward advocacy for pending legislation. AllSides itself offers a list of topics, with links to further reading. Political Galaxy, produced by VoteSmart (rated Centrist by AllSides and MediaBias/FactCheck), provides extensive lists of issues for each candidate in federal elections. Unfortunately, in brief testing, I found that Political Galaxy itself did not have much information, but rather tended to lead back to VoteSmart’s page for the specific candidate (e.g., Mitch McConnell’s page). On that page, I found it most effective to search by the name of the individual candidate. When I searched by address, the page brought up many names that were not candidates in the current election. The webpage for VoteSmart’s Political Courage Test said that it “Measures each candidate’s willingness to answer the voters’ questions.”
Those who are concerned about where candidates get their money may appreciate Greenhouse, which offers a free browser extension that displays “campaign contribution data for every Senator and Representative” on any webpage. OpenSecrets (a/k/a Center for Responsive Politics) (rated by AllSides and MediaBias/FactCheck as centrist) provides candidate-specific information on contributions and lobbying for national races. On the state level, the former Campaign Finance Institute explains that it has become a division of the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which Wikipedia describes as a nonprofit that tracks campaign finance data. Ballotpedia seems to indicate that the Institute presents itself, online, as FollowTheMoney (rated as centrist by MediaBias/FactCheck). TransparencyUSA offers “the answers you need about the money in state politics.”
Research into candidates and issues can become a part-time occupation. For instance, I use the free Feedly newsreader to subscribe to RSS feeds from across the political spectrum. Feedly gives me a one-line summary of each article, so I can browse among many articles without much time investment, opening only those that look like they may tell me something I haven’t already heard. Sources to try in Feedly (click the plus sign at the left edge of the Feedly screen) appear in media bias charts by Ad Fontes Media and AllSides. I probably skim 150 to 200 of those one-line summaries per day, and read maybe 10% of them, where “read” means I look through the article in search of things I haven’t already heard. That part goes fairly quickly. But getting into a particular issue can quickly become a quagmire. MediaMatters warns that the media are capable of getting sidetracked into exciting but unimportant issues.
If you do decide to explore any issues in detail, you may find it helpful to check various claims and candidates on political fact-checking sites. A search for the best fact-checking sites leads to multiple sources, many of which have a leftist lean (at e.g., Berkeley, American University, Middlebury). In what I think may be declining order of quality, such sites name FactCheck (which both AllSides and MediaBias/FactCheck consider centrist), Politifact (which AllSides describes as left-leaning but MediaBias/FactCheck considers minimally biased), and Snopes (which both AllSides and MediaBias/FactCheck consider centrist, but which I would have considered left-leaning).
How I Chose My Preferred Candidates
I wanted to cast a vote in every contest offered on Ballotpedia’s Sample Ballot. I decided to start at the bottom of the list, for several reasons: I already had some information about people at the top, and felt I would be gathering more as the season went on; I felt the available information would be more limited at the bottom, and easier to get through; I didn’t want to get lazy or worn out, and let myself decide to skip them; and I thought these might help me get warmed up and more prepared to make an informed choice in the higher-level contests.
In several minor races on my sample ballot, the candidate ran unopposed. I did not research these.
State Board of Education. On Ballotpedia (following links from the Sample Ballot), only the Democrat candidate had both a photo and a link to her website. On TeachTheVote, likewise, apparently only the Democrat had submitted responses to the Candidate Survey. On TransparencyUSA, again, nothing from the Libertarian; it looked like the Republican (whose fancy signs I had seen around the neighborhood) had vastly outspent the Democrat. I ran a Google search to find the Republican’s website, but got more out of the iVoterGuide page, whose questions only the Republican had answered. iVoterGuide felt that I was looking at candidates who were Somewhat Liberal vs. (strongly, I felt) Conservative. Some of the iVoterGuide questions did not seem relevant to the school board (e.g., views on abortion). The Republican’s answers to others were informative. Eventually, I found that VoteSmart provided particularly extensive information. That’s where I also realized that Ballotpedia’s Sample Ballot should not have put this office at the bottom of the list: it is a state, not local, office, and thus VoteSmart does provide information on its candidates, unlike those for local offices (below). Between their own websites and these materials, I felt I had enough to make a choice.
County Commissioners Court. Neither candidate had any information on Ballotpedia or iVoterGuide. A plain Google search for both of their names turned up a few articles and a video about them. It took maybe 15 minutes to get a sense of where I wanted to go with this. No denying that spending hours or days learning more about both candidates and about the court could change my perspective, but I wasn’t going to invest that time.
District Court. The situation here was much the same: beyond a very skimpy sketch on Ballotpedia, the Google search was my friend. That search turned up an article whose author said this:
Ask any of them: The system stinks. Even the winners don’t like the way they are put on the bench by voters in general elections. Most voters simply have no idea who they are voting for or why. …
Even a well-run campaign is no guarantee voters will learn why one candidate is a better choice than his or her lesser-known opponent. The simple reality of an attractive or familiar last name, or confusion over a candidate’s identity, can swing a race in the wrong direction. It happens all the time.
My question — and it is one of many questions that a lawyer might have about the American legal system: why have law schools, lawyers, and judges not come up with something better, something that would educate and inform voters? Martindale-Hubbell, among others, is capable of rating attorneys in practice; why not judges? Why were the candidates themselves unable or unwilling to post specific performance information, anything beyond a few lines about education and positions held, on Ballotpedia? Why aren’t journalists or others who do know the courts posting any guidance?
In this dearth of information, I had to make grossly uninformed choices in several different races. If I did find that one candidate provided information and the other didn’t, relying perhaps on his/her political party, I made a point of going with the one who provided information. Otherwise, at least my searches turned up reasons to doubt the candidate in one or two cases. Whether those reasons would stand up to careful scrutiny, I could not say for sure.
Court of Appeals. This was higher-profile than the District Court races. The Republican provided some information on Ballotpedia; the Democrat provided none. I wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that the Republican had been voted out of the judgeship twice before. I wasn’t able to get past a paywall to read an article about the two candidates. I had a very slight sense of which one I preferred, and why.
County Tax Assessor. I found one editorial endorsing the incumbent. There was nothing on Ballotpedia or iVoterGuide.
County Sheriff. This was interesting. I found an article in a seemingly left-leaning municipal newspaper that did not endorse the Democratic incumbent, whose term had apparently seen multiple problems, over a Republican offering an unexpectedly reformist perspective, at a time when changes in policing are under discussion nationwide.
State House of Representatives. On several issues, the Republican’s website conveyed strong views that I did not share. Our disagreement was strong enough to overcome my irritation at a Democratic challenger with a graduate degree and no government experience who could not even get her campaign website to function. It looked like she had lost to the Republican in at least one prior election. And yes, my tone at this point is a little more impatient because, from a voter’s perspective, my initial disbelief or dismay at the absence of good information is giving way to somewhat stronger feelings.
State Court of Criminal Appeals. Several seats were open. In one, the reportedly conservative JudgeVoterGuide (which didn’t seem to cover county races, outside California) gave the Republican a (perhaps predictable) score of 8 out of 10, and gave the Democrat a score of 2 out of 10. There was, again, a paywall preventing me from viewing a Texas Lawyer article on this contest. I liked the Democrat’s answers to the Ballotpedia questionnaire (vs. the Republican, who didn’t submit any answers at all), but they were very brief. I didn’t necessarily agree with everything on the Republican’s webpage, but at least it was accessible, whereas for some reason the Democrat provided a link to a private Facebook page that I couldn’t access. In another contest, iVoterGuide was very helpful.
State Supreme Court. These contests are a distinct step up from the lower court elections. At this level, the candidates have degrees from top law schools and are touting recommendations from the governor and experience clerking for the U.S. Supreme Court. A Google search turns up a number of articles, some of which highlight controversies related to this court’s recent decisions. Unlike the situation in lower courts, VoteSmart offers comparisons at this level. Meanwhile, my preferences have been sharpened somewhat in the process of comparing the lower court candidates; I have been reminded of my priorities in choosing judges. At this level, it’s not just about the candidates; it’s about the politics, about the calls for change in this state. Or maybe it just feels that way because I am less informed on the politics at the lower levels.
U.S. House of Representatives. There is much more information on candidates at the federal than at the state level. From an issues perspective, both Republican and Democratic candidates here were political newcomers, so VoteSmart showed no votes on key issues on the Votes Tab. The Positions tab seemed to say that neither had taken VoteSmart’s 2020 Political Courage Test. The Ratings tab indicated that they were nearly polar opposites in the view of the National Rifle Association, and that the Democrat had far more endorsements, though I was familiar with only a few (e.g., Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, End Citizens United). The Democrat also offered links to ~10 speeches, as distinct from only three for the Republican. The Funding tab indicated that the Democrat had raised about four times as much as the Republican. The Bio tab indicated that the Republican had interesting but narrow and mostly not policy-level experience and less prestigious educational credentials than the Democrat, who did have national-level policy experience. From a character/leadership perspective, neither candidate’s website offered video. I did find a paid advertising video for the Democrat. Not surprisingly, several respectable sources said the race “leans Democratic.”
U.S. Senate. This race pitted an older white male Republican lawyer with 17 years of experience in the Senate, and 16 years of experience as a judge and state attorney general before that, against a younger white female PhD with no prior political experience and, in her 20-year professional career to date, no significant executive, legislative, or legal experience. There was obviously an enormous difference between the two in terms of what VoteSmart showed on its Votes Tab: she had none; he had 37 pages of key votes. He had taken VoteSmart’s Political Courage Test; she had not. Her list of endorsements was actually only about half as long as that of the woman running for the House (above), though the Republican senator didn’t list many more. There was, again, polarization in their ratings. She had only one, from the NRA, while he had many, and those were extreme: most were either 0% of 100%, indicating a very staunch, consistently Republican record. Clicking “Select Issue” on her Ratings tab indicated that no records were available whereas, again, his page produced a list of ratings focused on the selected issue. On the Speeches tab, she provided links to maybe 20 public statements, while he offered 231 pages. The Funding tab indicated that she had raised $6.5M while he had raised $22.2M. My search for videos led to an interview in which she apparently said that her opponent had “grossly underestimated … our ability to detect bullshit.” In that phrasing, and in what I saw on the video, she was not trying to compete on his terms, as a solid professional who chose her words carefully and was capable of standing up to pressure and delivering in a pinch. Overall, my impression was that this Democratic candidate was not, as she might put it, working her ass off to win. It appeared, rather, that this race posed the question of whether voters were ready to choose some random — though certainly intelligent, educated, and chatty — female to replace an old, powerful, experienced white male. Her runoff victory in the primary was a narrow win, suggesting that her support on the left may not be as strong as she might wish. Recent polls suggested that her bio and style had not yet convinced voters: she still seemed to be well behind in the polls.
U.S. President. The presidential election usually commands far more attention than any other. Among the sites offering direct comparisons among presidential candidates, ProCon and ISideWith are especially easy to use. The former gave me a nice list of issues, with the presidential candidates’ stances on each. The latter produced “My 2020 Ballot,” listing my supposed percentages of support for each of the U.S. presidential and congressional races. I should have signed into ISideWith before beginning: I wanted it to save my entries for future races. I wondered whether ISideWith captured my views and priorities more accurately, or less accurately, than I did in my own blog post on the choice between Trump and Biden. The latter was still in development; but when I read through it, I did not feel that I was the voter whom ISideWith had said. Possibly it’s a contrast between what’s best for me personally, which is what ISideWith seems to emphasize, and what I think is best for the country or the world, which may be the focus of my post.
Finally, on a more general level, ChartsMe asked a series of weird questions and reached a conclusion as to whether my brain was Democrat or Republican.
Conclusion
This post traces through the task of learning about and choosing among candidates for political office in the U.S. November 2020 general election. In working through that process, I found that voters are expected to choose candidates for local and even state office with little to no significant information or guidance. At the lower levels, I observed what you’d expect: people just starting out in politics, taking their shot on relatively small amounts of money and with little public awareness or support — and, under such circumstances, being voted in or out on the basis of trivial factors, such as whether their name comes first in the list of candidates. As I moved from local to state, I saw more professionalism and greater public awareness and inquiry. Moving from state to the national level, it seemed that we were transitioning from people who were fundamentally qualified, if not necessarily very experienced, to career politicians who could actually be less qualified and yet politically more successful. At all levels, then, there were grounds to believe that the American form of democracy could be significantly improved, in terms of its ability to attract, support, and choose good leaders.
The American System 
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