Endorsement Portal

Ballotpedia Endorsement Portal Landing Page — a resource for connecting candidates and endorsers

The Ballotpedia Endorsement Portal is a central online resource for candidates and their prospective endorsers to find each other. From our portal, they can search for, look up information on, and communicate [future feature] with each other. Endorsers can make endorsement decisions and have their decisions automatically published on the Ballotpedia website, fulfilling the primary purpose of the Endorsement Portal to educate voters.

The Endorsement Portal is being actively promoted in North Carolina for 2025. While the Endorsement Portal will be available for all states, there may not yet be very many endorsers or candidate participants outside of North Carolina in 2025.

The Ballotpedia Endorsement Portal supports the endorsement process in several ways.

• For Candidates

  Features and Benefits for Candidates

  • Candidates can search through the many endorsers participating in the Ballotpedia Endorsement Portal.
  • The Endorsement Portal allows candidates to search for endorsers. It offers multiple search and filtering options, including matching algorithms that score how well endorsers align with the candidate’s priorities and positions on various political issues and topics.
  • Candidates can perform additional research by looking up information on the Endorsement Portal about each of the endorsers.
  • Through the Endorsement Portal, candidates can let endorsers know they are liked by the candidate.
  • The Endorsement Portal provides contact information for the endorsers and an integrated communications network [future feature], so that candidates can further communicate directly with endorsers.
  • Candidates can also reject an endorsement if they so choose.
• For Endorsers

  Features and Benefits for Endorsers

  • Through the Endorsement Portal, endorsers can access Ballotpedia’s vast nationwide database of elections and candidates.
  • The Endorsement Portal allows endorsers to search this database for candidates, with multiple search and filtering options, including matching algorithms that score how well participating candidates align with the endorser’s priorities and positions on various political issues and topics.
  • Endorsers can then use the robust information that Ballotpedia has to further research and vet candidates.
  • The Endorsement Portal provides contact information for candidates and an integrated communications network [future feature], so that endorsers can further communicate directly with candidates as they make their endorsement decisions.
  • When endorsers make endorsement decisions within the Endorsement Portal, those endorsements will be automatically published on the Ballotpedia website, where millions of readers will be able to view them.

How to Use the Endorsement Portal

• Candidates

  Instructions for Candidates

  • Sign up for and log in to use the Endorsement Portal.
  • Take the Endorsement Portal quiz, identifying your position on a handful of ideological topics and questions. This will allow Ballotpedia to better match you with endorsers.
  • Ballotpedia will need to verify your identity before you can use some of the more advanced features.
  • Fill in your profile so that endorsers can know who you are.
  • Search through the growing list of national and local endorsers using various filters, sorting, and matching criteria provided.
  • Reach out and communicate with those endorsers as you see fit, seeking their endorsements if you wish.
• Endorsers

  Instructions for Endorsers

  • Sign up for and log in to use the Endorsement Portal.
  • Take the Endorsement Portal quiz, identifying your position on a handful of ideological topics and questions. This will allow Ballotpedia to better match you with candidates.
  • Ballotpedia will need to verify your identity before you can use some of the more advanced features.
  • Fill in your profile so that candidates for office know who you are.
  • Easily and conveniently search through the vast database of national, state, and local candidates up for election using various filters, sorting, and matching criteria provided.
  • Reach out and communicate with those candidates as you see fit.
  • Note any endorsements you make in the Endorsement Portal, and they will be automatically published on the Ballotpedia website and sample ballots.

• 
  Contact us

  Contact Ken Carbullido at ken.carbullido@ballotpedia.org to learn more.

FAQs

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1. Will my information be secure?

• Ballotpedia takes security of data very seriously, employing both internal and external system engineers to secure the system.
• Data will be stored securely in the secure Ballotpedia managed database and servers.
• Multifactor authentication is employed for user verification and access to the Endorsement Portal.
• We must verify that person using the Endorsement Portal is the actual candidate, is a qualified campaign representative, is the endorser or is a qualified representative of the endorsing organization. We verify personal identities with the Truepic Vision mobile app, with which we have partnered. You can read more about that <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Ballotpedia:How_we_verify_Candidate_Connection_survey_responses" target="new">here</a>. We may need further credentials to verify that representatives of a campaign or an organizational endorser are authorized representatives.
• Initial verification of your identify will employ a third party verification system from TruePic.
• Ballotpedia does regular security scans across all of our software.
• Your profile information will be shared with other Endorsement Portal users and will be public on the Ballotpedia website.
• Your ideological positions will be kept private. Answers to the ideological quiz questions are not revealed to endorsers, candidates, readers, or the public. Your positions will only be used in the Endorsement Portal matching algorithms.

2. How does the matching work?

Ballotpedia worked with professor Dwight L Williams of Voting Buddy to develop the matching algorithms. The algorithms use the importance and value positions obtained on topics and questions in the quiz for endorsers and candidates. Those positions are used to determine how well endorsers and candidates align on their priorities, values, and positions. Relative scores are computed and further used to rank order a list of candidates with endorsers or rank order a list of endorsers with candidates.

3. Are all contests and candidates for all elections in the database?

The Ballotpedia database includes contests and candidates for all elections in the largest 100 cities by population, all state legislative, statewide, and congressional races across the nation, and executive offices in each state capital. Our coverage scope for local elections across the country is not yet comprehensive, but it does continue to grow.

Endorsement Portal Terms of Use

Preface

• The Ballotpedia Endorsement Portal is a platform where candidates and endorsers can:
  • Share information about themselves with each other.
  • Communicate with each other.
• Through the use of the Endorsement Portal, as well as other means, Ballotpedia collects candidate endorsements from endorsers and candidates to share with candidates, endorsers, readers, and customers.
• Ballotpedia is providing a platform where endorsers can record their own decisions about specific candidates of their choosing or not, based on information collected by Ballotpedia, as well as by and from other information sources.
• Ballotpedia is taking information provided by candidates and endorsers in an issue and ideological survey form to derive ideological scores that indicate how similarly endorsers and candidates have answered those issue and ideological survey form questions.
• Ballotpedia is allowing endorsers to record and communicate endorsements that Ballotpedia will subsequently share with readers, customers, and other endorsers.
• Ballotpedia is providing a platform where candidates can record their decision to reject an endorsement from an endorser, which will cause subsequent removal of that endorsement from the Ballotpedia database and website.

Terms of Use

• Ballotpedia reserves the right to deny or revoke the use of the Endorsement Portal due to poor behavior of any kind, including the use of improper, violent, abusive, or other harmful language.
• The use of automated scrapers and bots is prohibited. In particular, any means of scraping data from the Ballotpedia website is prohibited.
• Ballotpedia reserves the right to update, change, and even decommission the Endorsement Portal at any time or for any reason, with or without notice.
• Ballotpedia retains full intellectual property and copyright protections for all portions of the Endorsement Portal as allowed by law.
• Users are prohibited from copying all or part of the Endorsement Portal, its concepts, algorithms, designs, and source code contained therein.

Disclaimers

• Ballotpedia is not providing an endorsement of or for any candidate. Ballotpedia does not endorse nor make any recommendations regarding endorsements for any candidates or from any endorsers.
• Ballotpedia is not providing any judgment, evaluation, or recommendation of or for any candidate or endorser.
• Ballotpedia is not providing an endorsement service for candidates or endorsers.
• Ballotpedia is not performing any additional validation or verification of information provided by a candidate or endorser. Ballotpedia makes no claims and provides no assurances regarding the data or answers provided by Endorsement Portal users (candidates or endorsers).
• Any views or decisions made by candidates or endorsers are solely the view and responsibility of that candidate or endorser.
• Ballotpedia is neither agreeing with nor disagreeing with any information provided or decisions made by endorsers or candidates.
• Endorsements viewed, made, seen, communicated, or shared on the Ballotpedia platform are not necessarily the view or responsibility of Ballotpedia. They are simply and solely the reflection of views and decisions made by those endorsers and candidates.
• Ballotpedia acknowledges that system and human errors could occur in the collection and display of information, including endorsements.
• Rankings or scoring of candidates and endorsers is purely a computed, arithmetic calculation based on answers provided by candidates and endorsers. The algorithm identifies how similar the comparators’ answers to common ideological topics and questions are to each other. Ballotpedia makes no judgment or suggestion regarding fitness for an endorsement by the scores and rankings.
• Candidates must use their own judgment about whom they seek endorsements from. Candidates are encouraged to use information found in the Endorsement Portal, on the Ballotpedia website, and all other sources of information outside of Ballotpedia as they seek to find endorsements and support for their candidacy.
• Endorsers must use their own judgment in deciding whom to endorse. Endorsers are encouraged to use information found in the Endorsement Portal, on the Ballotpedia website, and all other sources of information outside of Ballotpedia as they attempt to find and identify candidates they may wish to endorse.