How to Research a Candidate Before Voting: A 20-Minute Method

Researching a candidate before voting takes about twenty minutes, not twenty hours. Work in one order: the official record first (who filed, who funds them, how they voted), then local reporting, then the campaign’s own material last. That sequence matters, because whoever you read first does your thinking for you — and campaigns are built to be read first.

What is the fastest way to research a candidate before voting?

Four stops, and you can do all of them from your kitchen table:

• Your county election office. Pull the sample ballot. Most people walk in knowing two races and guessing at nine or so others.
• Campaign finance filings. State and federal disclosure sites are public and searchable. You are not looking for a scandal. You are looking at who is invested in this person and what they do for a living.
• The actual record. If they have held office, there are roll-call votes or meeting minutes. A vote is as clear a statement as any that someone cannot take back.
• Local news. A reporter who has covered the county commission for nine years knows things no mailer will tell you.

Why do the small races deserve the most homework?

Because that is where your research changes the outcome. Presidential races are saturated; a school board seat or county race can turn on a few dozen votes and shape a district or community for a decade. Judges, county commissioners, auditors, and clerks make decisions that touch your street long before anything in Washington does. The races with the least coverage are the ones where twenty minutes of homework counts for the most.

What does any of this have to do with writing political thrillers?

More than you would think. Twenty years inside politics taught me that catastrophe almost never arrives with the flourish and drama of a novel — it arrives through a door or a decision that nobody was watching closely, filled by a person nobody researched before they voted for them.

That is the engine of the Bull Moose series: not necessarily villains with a master plan, but ordinary machinery handed to the wrong hands on a Tuesday when no one was noticing. In What It Takes to Kill a Bull Moose, the crisis of an authoritarian President  is possible because voters stopped paying attention. As Jackson Piper says, “Democracy doesn’t die in darkness — it drowns in apathy.”

I write that world with Jackson Piper and Valerie Lawrence as the heroes because the fix is sometimes unglamorous, too.  If you want the series’ origin story, the prequel is free — but the ballot research is the part that actually changes something.

Frequently asked questions

How long should it take to research a candidate before voting? About twenty minutes per contested race if you work in order: sample ballot, campaign finance filings, voting record or meeting minutes, then local news coverage. Campaign websites and mailers come last, not first.

Where can I find nonpartisan information about candidates? Start with your county or state election office for the sample ballot, the state and federal campaign finance disclosure databases for funding, and the official record of votes or meeting minutes if the candidate has held office. Local newspapers and nonpartisan voter guides can fill in the rest.

Here are three very good sites to use for federal races:

Guides.vote is a nonpartisan voter guide site sponsored by Youth Service America.

League of Women Voters has a storied history of nonpartisan voter education.

Votesmart.org is a free service that prides itself  on largely unbiased electoral analysis.

 

Why do local races matter more than national ones for individual voters? Turnout in down-ballot races is low enough that a few hundred votes can decide them, and the offices involved — school boards, judges, county commissions, clerks — make decisions that affect daily life directly. Your research simply carries more weight there.

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About the author: Michael Fedor is the award-winning author of the Bull Moose political thriller series. Drawing on 20 years inside politics and campaigns, he writes pulse-pounding fiction about power, democracy, and the fragile machinery of the republic.