Election Finder Preview: Candidate Project Tools

Say you've gotten tired of yelling at Washington, and have decided to join the large movement of people trying to make national change through local elections. Great. But which election should you focus on? Don't feel that you need to focus on a single city council race, or that the only meaningful local office is mayor. From School Board to Electric Commission, there are hundreds of thousands of local offices that can implement change in people's daily lives. But how would you even go about finding what other elected offices exist in your area, and when they're up?

If you were to start at your county's board of election website, you'd find some general information about big countywide offices that are up this year or next - maybe the election dates, if you're lucky. What you wouldn't find: School boards, offices in your city, elected offices in charge of special functions, like a soil and water commission or a parks district. If you get lucky and find the websites for these places, you might uncover some election dates, but not details like when you would need to file for office, and how, or how long you had to live in the district to legally run. You could call city hall, but to which office?

Welcome to the rabbit hole that is local election administration.

Is it really that hard to get basic information about running for office at the local level? In many places, it is. Election information - even simple information about available positions and election dates - can be spread out over a seemingly endless variety of places. Even if you do manage to stumble upon the right laws, you still have to interpret them correctly. If you're in the mood for a Mensa challenge, try translating this North Carolina law regarding municipal elections into actual dates on a calendar:

If the election is nonpartisan and the election and runoff election method of election is used, the election shall be held on the fourth Tuesday before the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and the runoff election, if required, shall be held on Tuesday after the first Monday in November. (NCGS § 163-279(a)(4))

Some of this stuff makes Kierkegaard seem like beach reading. If it's this difficult to simply find out when an election is, it's no wonder that so many people think that running for local office is something they could never do. But never fear, dear readers, NOI is here to help. Running for office, or getting involved locally in the political process, is easier than most people think. Finding election information should be simple too.

I'm leading a team that's been collecting basic information about local races-from dogcatcher to State Senate- and gathering it into an easy-to-browse database we're calling the Election Finder. We're constantly growing and updating the Election Finder with information about state, county and municipal elections, as well as information about school boards and special purpose governing districts of whose existence you might not have been aware. For each available office, we're putting together profiles that include election dates, filing deadlines, and any residency requirements that might exist, among other data. While we can't do all of your research for you, we can put you on the right path and connect you to resources that you need to make sure you can make difference in politics where you live - without having to spend hours of your life navigating a labyrinth of local websites and statutes.

When it launches this summer as part of NOI's Candidate Project, the Election Finder will have detailed information on a handful of states, and links to reaching your election officials everywhere else. And we're going to keep adding states as quickly as I can get through to wonderful election officials in municipal election offices across the country.

In the meantime, sign up here to be the first to know about the launch of the Election Finder and the Candidate Project.

So why are we doing this? Because we believe that elections at the local level should be open and accessible to all. The more centralized, plain-English information that exists on local elections, the more informed and engaged people will be - and a better-informed citizenry makes for a more robust public discourse and a more representative government at all levels. We want to demystify the under-the-hood mechanisms of local elections so that you can keep democracy running in your neighborhood.

Donny Bridges is Research Director for the Candidate Project at NOI

Photos from Flickr users Tall Chris and Dan Ancona, shared under Creative Commons license