Vote Smart

 VOTE SMART OFFERS NLA MEMBERS SPECIAL ACCESS TO TRACKING TOOLS FOR 2020 ELECTIONS

One benefit of being an NLA member is the potential to access Vote Smart. But what exactly is Vote Smart and why does it benefit you to become an NLA member to get access to use this?

Vote Smart has received funding to provide select organizations with the opportunity to turn their powerful non-partisan database on politicians and elections into a tracking and fact-checking tool for the 2020 election cycle. They are doing this by granting these select organizations access to their 27-year archive of the voting records, issue positions, campaign contributions, ratings, public statements and backgrounds of federal and state candidates and incumbents through the Vote Smart API (Application Programming Interface) and other tools.

The API allows users to integrate Vote Smart’s comprehensive, trusted data into their own websites, in stand-alone programs, and in other applications of their own design. The data selected can also be localized or restricted to specific candidates, issues, and elections. The Vote Smart Team can give guidance to those that integrate their data into stories and publications.

Other resources that Vote Smart provides are:

●      Deep links to specific data on VoteSmart.org— To set stories on elections and politics in context, the Vote Smart research team can assist in identifying specific pages on VoteSmart.org that give relevant background about political leaders and their public records and actions, and create links to the URLs with the most applicable data to each story, column or editorial.

●      Instructional seminars (in-person or online)— To elaborate on how their resources can be used by professionals and individuals, Vote Smart experts make presentations that include the background and purpose of Vote Smart, what and who the data covers, where to find it and how to use it in covering candidates and elections, and what kind of media research requests they can assist with.

●   Free research and fact-checking help— Vote Smart’s team of researchers can provide journalists with fact-checking for their pieces.

●   VoteEasy— VoteEasy allows voters to pick the key issues most important to them and then instantly see which candidates are most likely to agree with them.

●   Presentations— Vote Smart board members can provide organizations with lively multi-media presentations for their professional meetings.

About Vote Smart:  For almost three decades Vote Smart has been the nation’s most comprehensive, trusted and unique source for factual information on more than 40,000 political leaders at the federal, state and local levels.  As a 501(c)(3) founded in 1992 by national leaders and political opposites such as Presidents Ford and Carter, Senators Goldwater, McGovern and McCain, and Governor Michael Dukakis, Vote Smart doesn’t support or oppose any issue, party or candidate, and it is funded entirely by charitable foundations and the individual contributions of thousands of supporters.  Vote Smart has been endorsed and used by Google, Bing, the Department of Defense, Microsoft, the National Journal, and hundreds of national and local news organizations to power their own elections platforms.  Our users numbered in the 11 million range in the 2018 elections on our own website alone.