Nov. 3rd midterm is only 2 weeks away. In our increasingly polarized country, this midterm is particularly important in determining how we are moving forward.
In every election, a variety of organizations try to help with election transparency. But this year, an organization took a unique approach. Elections Simplified (electionssimplified.com) is gathering the track records of candidates with the help of AI so voters can see what the candidates have done instead of just their campaign marketing.
“The biggest problem when I get my ballot is that I don’t know who most of these candidates are. You can’t trust what a politician says”, says Mary, a Charlotte resident.
The website electionssimplified.com tackles this exact problem by showing what candidates have actually done – what they voted for and who they took money from.
We tried the website by first entering an address:
Then we see what elections we have:
Here we can see the elections on the ballot organized by the “vote power” – how much power our vote has in a given race. “Vote power” combines district population and estimated race competitiveness to help compare races. Smaller districts and closer contests generally receive higher ratings.
Now we choose a race and see each candidate’s detail
We can see here for the US Senate race, each candidate’s record is grouped by issue, with a source linked.
For the ballot measure:
The website translates this ballot measure into plain English and shows what a YES and a NO vote mean, which is helpful.
Overall we find this website useful. Tools like electionssimplified.com are making our voting increasingly easy to understand.
