Chicagoans Lead the Conversation with 2019 Candidates
Contact: Kristen Vonasek, Director of Communications
Tel: (608) 255-0688
E-mail: Media@ballotpedia.org
The McCormick Foundation, the Interactivity Foundation, City Bureau, and Ballotpedia team up to bring the concerns of Chicago citizens to their candidates
Middleton, Wis. - November 15, 2018: With Chicago’s filing deadline just weeks away, four organizations are teaming up to see that voters have the resources they need to feel confident at the polls. This year, Chicago will have access to localized candidate information from Ballotpedia, designed through a series of discussions with Chicago voters.
On Wednesday, Ballotpedia announced the 2019 Chicago Community Discussion Project sponsored by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. Through a partnership with the Interactivity Foundation and City Bureau, Ballotpedia is reaching out to Chicagoans to recruit a diverse group of citizens from a sample of Chicago’s wards. These volunteers are then participating in guided forums to discuss the key issues facing the city. The concerns and questions heard from these forums will be translated into a list of questions for candidates. All 2019 candidates running for election in the city of Chicago will be invited to respond to these questions, which will then be added into Ballotpedia’s in-depth coverage on Ballotpedia.org. This will allow Chicagoans access to more information than ever before on what their candidates for office would do if elected.
“With unhelpful political dialogue all around us, overwhelming citizens, it’s no wonder that many people have come to view the political process with deep skepticism – or that they simply choose to tune out,” said Leslie Graves, founder of Ballotpedia. “With this project, we hope to help both the voters and the candidates. We’ll provide Chicago voters with answers to relevant, values-driven questions. We’ll frame the questions in a way that helps the candidates answer in a meaningful way, providing voters with an understanding of what motivated the candidates to run.”
Ballotpedia expects to see an increased focus by candidates, media, and activists on local Chicago concerns as expressed in our discussion groups and communicated through our candidate questionnaires. Ballotpedia, the McCormick Foundation, the Interactivity Foundation, and City Bureau hope this results in a higher quality of political discourse in Chicago in the lead up to the 2019 election. Their ultimate objective is to see greater engagement in the democratic process by Chicagoans.
If you, or someone you know, is in Chicago and interested in participating in these discussions, Email "Yes Chicago" to gundersen@interactivityfoundation.org or visit http://bit.ly/2QJd780.
About Ballotpedia
Ballotpedia is the online encyclopedia of American politics and elections. Its goal is to preserve and expand knowledge about politics by providing objective information about local, state, and federal politics and policies. Its content includes trustworthy information readers can rely on, covering government officials and the offices they hold, political issues and public policy, elections, candidates, and the influencers of politics. Headquartered in Middleton, Wisconsin, Ballotpedia was founded in 2006. It includes over 270,000 professionally authored encyclopedic articles that have garnered over 900 million page views.
If you’d like more information, or to schedule an interview, please contact Ballotpedia's Director of Communications at media@Ballotpedia.org.
