How to find information about Colorado elections
PRIMARY RESOURCES
- Local News (Aurora Sentinel, Brighton Blade, Daily Camera, etc)
- Respective City and County websites and Clerks (especially City Charters)
- Wayback Machine (for disabled sites, needing info from specific time periods, facing paywalls, etc. Denver Post Election results are notorious for 502 Bad Gateway errors. Wayback Machine will help circumvent that.)
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
There are almost a dozen different tabs along the bottom of the Elected
Official Google Doc. Right now they are broken up into:
WHAT WE DO: (currently being overhauled). Will ultimately explain the
original and continuing vision for this project, and explain how everything
is found and calculated.
HOW WE DO IT: This document. Instructional Guideline.
WHY WE DO IT: BECAUSE CIVICS IS IMPORTANT TO EVERYONE
RISK LISTS: Triage. Through research and constituent feedback, we identify
races that are crucial and close. If people are from safely liberal districts,
they can instantly find races nearby they can "adopt" (donate, phone bank,
canvass).
2017 ELECTIONS: Everything up for vote in 2017.
2018 ELECTIONS: Everything up for vote in 2018.
FEDERAL LEVEL: President, his cabinet, his advisors, ambassadors, important
committees (National Security Council, etc). Also has US Senators and US
Reps from Colorado.
(On the backburner for now as we keep our sights on local races for 2017.)
STATE LEVEL: Governor, Lt. Gov, State Attorney General, State Treasurer,
State Secretary of State, Governor appointees, all members of both chambers
of the state legislatures.
JUDICIARY: Federal, State, County, City judges. Outlining who appointed
them (and what party) and when they're next up for retention vote, if applicable.
SHERIFFS: Sheriffs in every jurisdiction, and whether they are appointed
(and by whom and what party) or elected (along with accompanying electoral data).
CITY LEVEL: City Councils and their appointments (City Manager, etc) and
who the City Manager hires (City Clerk, Fire Chief, Police Chief. May differ
from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, so confirm chain of command with each city).
COUNTY LEVEL: County Commisioners, County Assesor, County Coroner,
County Surveyor, County Clerk & Recorder, County Treasurer, etc.
SCHOOL BOARDS: State Board of Education (tied to US Congressional
Districts), CU Regents (also tied to US Congressional Districts), public school
districts across the state.
MISSING INFORMATION: If in the course of research specific data cannot be
found, note it here.
More may be added later as needed. Need may arise to break things down regionally separated tabs, but right now priority is on hard research and data.
Every tab has entries listed alphabetically. For example, if the next entry being researched is the Brighton City Council, it should go after Aurora City Council, but before Broomfield City Council.
FONTS
Arial
Default black color
Title font size (like Broomfield City Council): 20 (with bold)
Header font size: 15 (with underline)
Body font size: 13
Horizontal align: Center
Vertical align: Center
Wrap text: Judgement call
- Some copy-pastes from other website will change the font and alignment.
Plus sometimes adding rows will result in differing font and alignment just for those rows.
GENERAL PROCESS
NOTE: These can all happen in any order you are comfortable with. This serves merely as a guide. So long as it gets done, doesn't matter the order.
This is just the process I personally use and find it saves time and frustration after having wasted time and endured frustration when I first started. Through that, I found areas where I could simplify the process.
NOTE 2: Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V will be your most dedicated assistants.
1) Identify a specific City Council, School Board, County Commissioner, or any other block of offices that are not yet in the Google Document. (Priority should be given to what entities will have seats on the ballot in 2017, so generally City Councils and School Boards).
- To prevent people doing the same thing at once, starting an entry stakes a claim.
2) Find the proper tab, and find the proper alphabetical placement.
3) Add new rows (Generally 64 is a good start. More may be added later as needed, or later can delete extras. Just give yourself room to work).
- Make sure adding the rows will not knock surrounding entries out of alignment. So scroll further right to make sure you add rows to rows without any information.
4) Set up the Title, size 20 and bolded, (like Broomfield City Council) a few rows down from the previous entry.
5) Go to another entry and copy-paste the template headers (District, Name, Party, Action, etc)
6) Fill out the District/Position column, then names, when the next election is for that office (if it's 2017 or 2018, bold it and use a yellow-orange color, or copy-paste from another entry), and contact info (preferably both phone and email).
- Generally they're all found on the same site, even if across multiple pages**
- Start with 5 rows between the entries in the District column
7) FIGURE OUT PARTY AFFILIATION.
- VoterRecords.com
- First Name, Last Name, if it's a city council, search the city. If it's regional, scroll through the entries and narrow it down to county. If there's more than one matching entry even after narrowing it down and it has multiple parties, then move on.
- GOOGLE (or your prefered search engine).
- [First Name] [Last Name] Republican - [First Name] [Last Name] Democrat - [First Name] [Last Name] Endorse - Prefered sources are statewide or local publications, party websites, or candidate's websites.
-If you come across a promising entry but it's an expired website, copy the website address, go to the Wayback Machine, paste the website address, and see if it is up there.
- If STILL no confirmable information, simply put "(Cannot Confirm)" in their Party entry and move on. This will require further feedback from someone local who is familiar with their votes, and we have limited time.**
8) RESEARCH ELECTIONS. Disappointingly, most cities do not have comprehensive election results data (Aurora is notorious in this regard). Some counties have great data (Broomfield is gorgeously meticulous), others not as much. So the first source I go to is:
- GOOGLE.
- [Specific Office] Election Results [Year] - EX: Aurora City Council Election Results 2015
-If a government site pops up, explore that first. Some may have useful information as turnout as well.
- MAKE SURE that an entire electorate is covered. For example: The city of Brighton is mostly Adams County, but some sections are Weld County. Checking Brighton results in Adams County may not be completely accurate.
- DENVER POST. Click on that result. 9 times out of 10, it is a "502 Bad Gateway" error. Copy the website address.
- WAYBACK MACHINE - Paste the website address. This should resolve the issue.
-Take the largest percentage and subtract it by the second-largest percentage. That is the margin of victory. Then place next to it in parentheses the percentage received by the victor.
-If the margin is 10% or lower, BOLD it.
-If the victor is different than the current seatholder and it's from the most-recent election: -Is the current seatholder appointed? Find out why there was a vacancy.
- Directly under the margin, put the victor (if different from the current seatholder) in parentheses, regardless of reason. (If there is a unique reason, note it.)
-If there were other opponents, write them down underneath with percentage, ordering them in order of decending percentage.
-For eveyone on the ballot, find out their PARTY AFFILIATION. Color their names accordingly to party affiliation.
- Repeat this process until you get 2 elections for each 4-year position, or 4 elections for each 2-year position.
- Generally if I have to use Wayback for the most recent one, I then go to the website address in the search bar, delete the year and replace it with the next I wish to search. Like delete the "2015' and replace with 2013 and so on.
- If for some reason results are not to be found for a specific year despite casting a wider net on Google, document what office and year and put it in the MISSING INFORMATION tab and move on. Sometimes 2009 is tougher to find. Anything beyond that at the local level is almost impossible to find.
9) RESEARCH TERM LIMITS. Most are 8 consecutive years, but some have extended term limits via ballot initiative (Aurora and Littleton have limits of 12 consecutive years, for example).
- Generally City Charters and the like should inform on this, but they are not always easy to find or decipher.
- GOOGLE - [Region] [Position] Term Limits (EX: Aurora City Council Term Limits) - [Region] [Position] Termed Out (This find articles that can help illuminate.)
- BONUS: If you can find what year term limit extensions passed and by what margin. Or if there was any recent FAILED initiative, when, and what margin. Will help predict if they will try again.
10) CAMPAIGN FINANCE. This will be the hardest. Many do not keep the records online, or they require convoluted and time-consuming processes. So for now, as important as it ultimately will be to have that information, it is ok if this ends up being a MISSING INFORMATION entry. At least cover the basics first:
- GOOGLE (as news articles give more notable detail)
- [Region] [Position] Campaign Finance - [Region] [Position] Donations
- TRACER, Political Race Search
If nothing, MISSING INFORMATION, and move on.
11) DEMOGRAPHICS
This is a relatively new feature being incorporated in. Look to the Brighton City Council Entry for the Demographics Template. For School Boards, right now it's # of Students, Graduation Rate, # of Schools, and Operating Budget.
For City Council Demographics:
- StatisticalAtlas.com - City-Data.com - GOOGLE
- Fill out as much information as you can. Whatever you can't, put in the MISSING INFORMATION tab accordingly.
- For items that involve multiple percentages (age, education, marital status, etc), list it in descending order.
For School Board Info:
- Ballotpedia - Official Website of School District
- School Districts ought to have reports for current and/or upcoming school year pertaining to students, schools, graduation percentage, and operating budget.
- If not given a direct number for the cost per student or per school, take the Operating Budget and divide is by the # of students for the cost per student average, then take the Operating Budget and divide it by the # of schools for the per school average.
12) GENERAL
Some Mayors are elected. Some are 4 years. Some are 2 years. Some are appointed by the city council. Some Pro-Tems are appointed by the Mayor or by vote of the City Council. Research the respective structure. Document it in the entry, and ID the Mayor and Pro-Tem accordingly (look at Brighton City Council vs. Littleton City Council entries)
Superintendents are generally appointed by the respective school boards. Look at other entries to see that the process for finding data on them is much the same (ID their party), but search to see when they were appointed, their salary, and when their contract is next up for renewal.
If you find anything especially worth noting or linking to, please use your judgment to do so, especially if it's for important data that had to be dug for, like endorsements to identify affiliation. For example: We haven't had a Democrat elected as State Secretary of State in SIXTY YEARS, that is indeed noteworthy within the CO SoS entry, so it is so included.
