Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

Re:Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 10... by JumpCrisscross on Tuesday May 17, 2016 @05:58PM (#11717831)

Relatively newly-minted American here. A unified election calendar and ballot database would be helpful.

The number of local (especially community budgeting, judicial and special district) elections I've missed out of ignorance, despite checking New York City's Board of Elections website, is nuts. Furthermore, there seems to be an expectation that voters blindly vote along party lines. Almost every election there will be a list of uncompetitive judicial runs I've never heard of, and so had no time to do any research on. The result, for those line items, is me leaving them blank.

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Re:Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 10... by dta5003 on Tuesday May 17, 2016 @06:03PM (#11717878)

Ballotpedia helps: https://ballotpedia.org/Main_Page

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Re:Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 10... by debracleaver on Tuesday May 17, 2016 @06:21PM (#11718040)

plus 1 to ballotpedia. also +1 to the need for an easy to read calendar. honestly, if someone builds something we can use, we'll put it up at vote.org and promote the heck out of it.

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Re:Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 10... by cauterized on Tuesday May 17, 2016 @07:08PM (#11718373)

NYC elections are the worst. In congressional, state representative, or city council election years, there are so many candidates running in so many districts within the single media market that a TV station could cover nothing else 24/7 and still only spend a few minutes on each candidate per week. You could have an entire edition of one of the tabloids devoted to nothing but a couple paragraphs about each candidate for each race. And that's for a general election, let alone a primary.

That is, if the races were contested. Which they aren't because nobody pays attention to them. Which is in part because there's no information to be had on them even if you look for it. Stupid vicious cycle. So people vote for those offices along party lines or leave the ballots blank.

I've been thinking about trying to build something that would help solve the problem, but it's really a social problem more than a technical problem, and who has the time to go chasing down bios and position statements from hundreds of candidates every spring and fall?

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Re:Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 10... by Redoubts on Tuesday May 17, 2016 @06:22PM (#11718056)

Judicial elections are one of my least favorite things about American democracy. I always feel chronically underinformed, and feel weird about voting in line with what the one local newspaper has to say on the matter.

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