How to find information about Colorado elections
This page describes how to find information for the Colorado elections project.
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. Each of these corresponds to pages on the wiki. Right now they are broken up into:
- WHAT WE DO: (ongoing). 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. Will use information from Colorado Resistance, with their permission. We have also pledged our information for their use as well.
- Everyone should ideally work for their candidates in every district in every race on their own ballot, but some energies and resources can be better transferred. 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 advisers, 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 Commissioners, County Assessor, 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. Divided by city and county so we can seek information from the proper clerk.
More sections 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 entry should be 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.
To make the data easier to enter a number of templates have been created. By using templates, the data usually can be entered in name=value format, which is typically easier than dealing with the wiki syntax for tables. A list of the currently available templates is here. You can certainly try your hand at creating or modifying templates, but the template language is at best arcane. If you want to create or change any templates feel free to contact Rick Block.
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 Wiki. (Priority should be given to what entities will have seats on the ballot in 2017, so generally City Councils and School Boards, and recalls and special elections where applicable).
- To prevent people doing the same thing at once, starting an entry stakes a claim.
2) Find the proper wiki page,
3) Click the edit tab (make sure you are logged in or there is no Edit tab) and find the proper alphabetical placement within the dialog box.
4) Copy-paste the respective template either above the template box (and add new code, as following the template, as needed), or copy-paste a template from another entry (make sure to get rid of information from the copied entry).
5) Search for information,=. Usually names, when the next election is for that office, and contact info (preferably both phone and email) are all on the respective official website of the specific political body, so those pieces of information can be filled out fairly quickly.
6) 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 (GOP, conservative) - [First Name] [Last Name] Democrat (liberal, progressive) - [First Name] [Last Name] Endorse - Preferred sources are statewide or local publications, party websites, or candidate's websites. Anything other than that walks the thin line of conjecture.
-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. Also add to the MISSING INFORMATION page under the corresponding city and/or county.**
7) RESEARCH ELECTION RESULTS. 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 leave something to be desired.
- 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. It must be certified results from Brighton city itself.
- 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 descending percentage.
-For everyone 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. For example: 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.
8) 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. Boulder is seeking Fall 2017 to extend the County Sheriff's term limit to 5 consecutive terms).
- 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.
- If cannot find, add it to MISSING INFORMATION under respective city and/or county.
9) 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. Most likely the bulk of this research will be going to city and county clerks and even the Colorado Secretary of State's office in a coordinated manner to get as much accomplished as possible in as few trips as possible.
10) 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. More absolutely can be added like Student/Teacher ratios, Racial demographics, median home value, median household income, free lunch recipient percentage, poverty rate, etc.
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.
11) 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.
