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Ballotpedia is a nonprofit and nonpartisan online political encyclopedia that covers federal, state, and local politics, elections, and public policy in the United States. The website was founded in 2007. Ballotpedia is sponsored by the Lucy Burns Institute, a nonprofit organization based in
Middleton, Wisconsin Middleton is a city in Dane County, Wisconsin, United States, and a suburb of the state capital, Madison. Middleton's motto is "The Good Neighbor City." The population was 21,827 at the 2020 census. In 2007, Middleton was chosen as the best pl ...
. Originally a collaboratively edited
wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...
, Ballotpedia is now written and edited entirely by a paid professional staff. As of 2014, Ballotpedia employed 34 writers and researchers; it reported an editorial staff of over 50 in 2021.


Mission

Ballotpedia's stated goal is "to inform people about politics by providing accurate and objective information about politics at all levels of government." The website "provides information on initiative supporters and opponents, financial reports, litigation news, status updates, poll numbers, and more." It originally was a "community-contributed web site, modeled after
Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
" which is now edited by paid staff. It "contains volumes of information about initiatives, referenda, and recalls."


Parent organization

Ballotpedia is sponsored by the Lucy Burns Institute (LBI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization. The organization reported revenue of $5.37 million in 2019. LBI was founded in December 2006 by the group's current president,
Leslie Graves Leslie Marie Graves (September 29, 1959 – August 23, 1995) was an American actress. Early years Leslie Graves's father, Michael Graves, was a theatre actor and introduced her to the entertainment industry when she was about 10. She started ...
. The group is named after
Lucy Burns Lucy Burns (July 28, 1879 – December 22, 1966) was an American suffragist and women's rights advocate.Bland, 1981 (p. 8) She was a passionate activist in the United States and the United Kingdom, who joined the militant suffragettes. Burns ...
, co-founder of the
National Woman's Party The National Woman's Party (NWP) was an American women's political organization formed in 1916 to fight for women's suffrage. After achieving this goal with the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the NW ...
. The group is headquartered in Middleton, Wisconsin.


History

Ballotpedia was founded by the Citizens in Charge Foundation in 2007. Ballotpedia was sponsored by the Sam Adams Alliance in 2008, along with Judgepedia and Sunshine Review. In 2009, their sponsorship was transferred to the nonprofit Lucy Burns Institute, based in
Middleton, Wisconsin Middleton is a city in Dane County, Wisconsin, United States, and a suburb of the state capital, Madison. Middleton's motto is "The Good Neighbor City." The population was 21,827 at the 2020 census. In 2007, Middleton was chosen as the best pl ...
. On July 9, 2013, Sunshine Review was acquired by the Lucy Burns Institute and merged into Ballotpedia. The Lucy Burns Institute is named after suffragist
Lucy Burns Lucy Burns (July 28, 1879 – December 22, 1966) was an American suffragist and women's rights advocate.Bland, 1981 (p. 8) She was a passionate activist in the United States and the United Kingdom, who joined the militant suffragettes. Burns ...
who along with
Alice Paul Alice Stokes Paul (January 11, 1885 – July 9, 1977) was an American Quaker, suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist, and one of the main leaders and strategists of the campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ...
founded the
National Woman's Party The National Woman's Party (NWP) was an American women's political organization formed in 1916 to fight for women's suffrage. After achieving this goal with the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the NW ...
. Judgepedia was merged into Ballotpedia in March 2015. When actress
Regina King Regina Rene King (born January 15, 1971) is an American actress and director. She is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and four Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2019, ''Time'' magazine named her o ...
won an Emmy at the
72nd Primetime Emmy Awards The 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards honored the best in American prime time television programming from June 1, 2019, until May 31, 2020, as chosen by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. The ceremony was originally to be held at the Microsof ...
in 2020, during her acceptance speech she encouraged people to use Ballotpedia to prepare for the upcoming election.


Judgepedia

Judgepedia was an online
wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...
-style encyclopedia covering the American legal system. In 2015, all content from Judgepedia was merged into Ballotpedia. It included a database of information on state and federal courts and judges. According to its original website, the goal of Judgepedia was "to help readers discover and learn useful information about the court systems and judiciary in the United States." Judgepedia was sponsored by the Sam Adams Alliance in 2007, along with Ballotpedia and Sunshine Review. In 2009, sponsorship of Judgepedia was transferred to the Lucy Burns Institute, which merged Judgepedia into Ballotpedia in March 2015. Judgepedia had a weekly publication titled ''Federal Courts, Empty Benches'' which tracked the vacancy rate for Article III federal judicial posts. The ''Orange County Register'' noted Judgepedia's coverage of Courts of Appeal and the Supreme Court. Judgepedia's profile of
Elena Kagan Elena Kagan ( ; born April 28, 1960) is an American lawyer who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 10, 2010, and has served since August 7, 2010. Kagan ...
was included in the Harvard Law School Library's guide to Kagan's Supreme Court nomination and the
Law Library of Congress The Law Library of Congress is the law library of the United States Congress. The Law Library of Congress holds the single most comprehensive and authoritative collection of domestic, foreign, and international legal materials in the world. Es ...
's guide to Kagan.


Partnerships

In May 2018, in response to scrutiny over the misuse of
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
by those seeking to maliciously influence elections, Twitter announced that it would partner with Ballotpedia to add special labels verifying the authenticity of political candidates running for election in the U.S. During the 2018 United States elections, Ballotpedia supplied
Amazon Alexa Amazon Alexa, also known simply as Alexa, is a virtual assistant technology largely based on a Polish speech synthesiser named Ivona, bought by Amazon in 2013. It was first used in the Amazon Echo smart speaker and the Echo Dot, Echo Studio ...
with information on polling place locations and political candidates. In 2018, Ballotpedia,
ABC News ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ''ABC World News Tonight, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include Breakfast television, morning ...
, and
FiveThirtyEight ''FiveThirtyEight'', sometimes rendered as ''538'', is an American website that focuses on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States. The website, which takes its name from the number of electors in th ...
collected and analyzed data on candidates in Democratic Party primaries in order to determine which types of candidates Democratic primary voters were gravitating towards.


Studies

In 2012, Ballotpedia authored a study analyzing the quality of official state voter guides based on six criteria. According to the study, only nine states were rated "excellent" or "very good," while 24 states received a "fair" or "poor" rating. In May 2014, the
Center for American Progress The Center for American Progress (CAP) is a public policy research and advocacy organization which presents a liberal viewpoint on economic and social issues. It has its headquarters in Washington, D.C. The president and chief executive offic ...
used Ballotpedia data to analyze the immigration policy stances of Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ballotpedia has highlighted the complex language used in various U.S. ballot measures. In 2017, with a sample of 27 issues from nine states, the group determined that, on average, ballot descriptions required a graduate-level education to understand the complex wording of issues, with the average American adult only reading at a 7th to 8th grade reading level. A
Georgia State University Georgia State University (Georgia State, State, or GSU) is a Public university, public research university in Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1913, it is one of the University System of Georgia's four research universities. It is also the ...
analysis of 1,200 ballot measures over a decade showed that voters were more likely to skip complex issues altogether. Some ballot language confuses potential voters with the use of double negatives. Several states require plain-language explanations of ballot wording. In 2015,
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
visiting scholar Carl Klarner conducted a study for Ballotpedia which found that state legislative elections have become less competitive over time, with 2014's elections being the least competitive elections in the past 40 years. Ballotpedia found that in 2020, fewer state legislative incumbents lost general election seats than in any other year in the past decade, although incumbents were more vulnerable in primary elections in any year since 2012.


References


External links

* {{Lucy Burns American online encyclopedias Internet properties established in 2007 MediaWiki websites Wiki communities Wikis Non-profit organizations based in Wisconsin Election and voting-related organizations based in the United States