Voters often make candidate choices based on political parties or “vibes.”

QuizTheVote aims to offer voters a chance to think about their positions on public policy when it comes to local elections, matching voters with candidates who share their views.

We’re developing a quiz framework to be used by news organizations in conjunction with voter guides. It will be based on Google sheets and offer an iframe embed for content management systems.

Local news outlets would determine what issues are most important for voters when it comes to candidates for school board, city council, county offices, legislature, Congress. And they’d come up with potential solutions to those issues for the quiz.

That might involve listening sessions with the community, audience surveys, input from outgoing elected officials and community leaders, and general knowledge of news staff and/or existing polling.

Once the questions and potential solutions are developed, candidates would be surveyed. In addition to choosing from the multiple-choice/yes-no or disagree-agree scale options, they’d be allowed 150 words to explain their positions on each issue.

Voters would be matched with the candidate with the most similar views, as well as shown responses from other candidates.

We’ve seen this done on a national scale when large news organizations create quizzes for presidential contests or with The City NYC’s Meet Your Mayor quiz. We hope to create a framework that any news organization may use for any election contest. It would be similar to TimelineJS, using Google sheets to create the quiz. 
We’re working with the Colorado News Collaborative, where we’re also raising money from supporters in smaller amounts