ProCon.org Goes Local with New Nonpartisan Election Resource
Since ProCon.org’s nonpartisan presidential election websites helped millions of voters evaluate the candidates in 2008 and 2012, many readers have asked ProCon.org to cover local elections. For the first time, ProCon.org decided to bring its unique brand of voter education to local elections, starting with Santa Monica, California, where the national organization is based.
Launched on October 8, 2014, the Local Elections website from ProCon.org gathers opinions from candidates for the Santa Monica City Council, School Board, and College Board on many important community issues. Visitors are able to read about each candidate, click on an issue to read candidate position statements, and take the candidate matching quiz to see which candidate best matches their views. More than 600,000 people took a similar version of this quiz on ProCon.org’s 2012 presidential election website.
Santa Monica has 92,472 residents and 58,803 registered voters. On Election Day 2014 (and prior via absentee ballot), there were 20,479 ballots cast in the City Council race indicating a voter turnout rate of 34.82%. 5,025 people visited the Local Elections website to help them decide which candidates to support. The margins of victory in the three races covered by ProCon.org were 586 votes (City Council), 264 votes (School Board), and 633 (College Board).
Jay Rakow, CEO of ProCon.org, stated: “Given that the margin of victory between the last slot filled and the first runner-up in each race was less than 700 voters, it is clear that our program played a meaningful role in enhancing the election process in Santa Monica. I’m pleased that ProCon.org helped to stimulate voter interest and hopefully drove informed voters to the polls. We intend to build on this success by expanding our voter information websites to state and local elections throughout the country."
The Local Elections website was created as part of a collaboration with the Santa Monica Daily Press, which hosts an annual candidate debate entitled "Squirm Night.” At the debate, ProCon.org enabled voters to access the ProCon.org Local Election website on computer terminals and tablets. The moderators of “Squirm Night” directed a number of questions to the candidates based on their quiz answers and positions on the ProCon.org website.
Ross Furukawa, Publisher of the Santa Monica Daily Press, stated: “Partnering with ProCon.org on the local election in 2014 was fantastic. Through their voter quiz we were able to bring a tool to local voters in Santa Monica that matched them up with the candidate who best fit their values. While most of us are privy to the national news cycle on some level in our everyday lives, it takes a tremendous amount of time and commitment to learn about and thus properly decide upon how to vote on local issues. The ProCon.org quiz was a perfect interactive complement to our coverage and gave our readers a new and interesting way to engage in the issues surrounding the 2014 local election in Santa Monica.”
Representatives of state and local governments and media outlets interested in bringing ProCon.org’s local election sites to their area may contact permissions@procon.org.
