Ballots for the upcoming Democratic and Republican primaries throughout Colorado hit the mail today, and one organization wants you to know who will appear on them before you vote.
BallotReady.org is a project by two women in Chicago that aims to help every voter get informed about candidates. Just go to the website, load in your mailing address and scroll through the list of names to find out who these people running for office are and what issues are important to them.
“We cover every candidate and every ballot measure on the ballot,” Ballot Ready co-founder Alex Niemczewski told The Colorado Independent. “We make it easy to compare them based on what matters to you.”
The project is a partner with the University of Chicago’s non-partisan Institute of Politics, which provided initial funding. Niemczewski says she came up with the idea after hearing about a Chicago election she didn’t know was taking place.
Like the founders of the new crowd-sourced voter guide Change Politics, which we told you about last week, researchers for Ballot Ready found many voters don’t know much about local candidates up for election or the local offices for which these candidates are running.
“People don’t know, when someone is in office, what they do,” Niemczewski says.
Find out what your upcoming Colorado primary ballot will look like by visiting Ballot Ready’s website here.
County clerks and recorders started sending out ballots to registered voters Monday, June 6. Nearly 958,000 ballots are being sent to Democratic voters across Colorado, and more than 971,500 will go to Republicans. Voters will have until June 28 to mail their completed ballots back.
[Photo credit: Kelley Minars via Creative Commons in Flickr]
fyi, you should put in your *residence address* not your mailing address; both are used for voter registration, as you may receive your ballot somewhere other than your home, however residence determines your polling districts…
i’ve seen this distinction cause significant confusion for voters at the polls