Voter’s Edge
MapLight, a nonpartisan research organization that tracks and publicizes information about money’s influence on politics, is working to make comprehensive, customized voting information more accessible to citizens. In 2014 MapLight piloted Voter’s Edge, an online tool that allows users to enter a home address and view personalized, nonpartisan information on candidates, ballot measures, campaign finance data and more. MapLight partnered with the League of Women Voters of California Education Fund to offer local voting information to Californians, and the Rita Allen Foundation supported the expansion of Voter’s Edge to include details on federal and state-level candidates in all 50 states. Now, funding from the Rita Allen Foundation is enabling MapLight to improve on the Voter’s Edge prototype by creating a standardized, replicable model that will eventually provide federal, state and local voting information for all jurisdictions in the United States. Assessing the effectiveness of Voter’s Edge during the 2016 general election will guide future efforts to expand the platform to cover federal, state and local voting information for every state.