Local Volunteers Fill Void with New Voter Guide

A new and different kind of voter guide is available online. The RepresentUs Voter Guide to the 2018 primaries features 60 candidates answering questions about ways to strengthen representative democracy in Massachusetts. Along with an overview of their platforms, candidates share their thoughts about ranked choice voting, publicly-financed campaigns, gerrymandering, and Citizens United — the Supreme Court ruling that helped pave the way for corporations and wealthy individuals to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections through super PACs. (This last issue is at the heart of ballot question 2 this November.)

The guide is the work of a small group of volunteers who are part of the Greater Boston chapter of RepresentUs, a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization based in Florence, MA, bent on fixing "our rigged political system" by working from the states up. The organization sees big money in politics and current electoral processes as structural problems that result in laws and policies that favor special interests over the common good.

Local chapter members include, Jeff Sugarman, Ellen Vliet Cohen, and Sherry Reisner of Arlington, Martha Hopewell of Melrose, Thomas Hartwell of Andover, Bryan Sutton of Cambridge, and chapter leader, Cristian Morales of Boston.

Why create another voter guide?

The simple answer is: You can’t fix what you don’t talk about. In the spring of 2018, only a few Massachusetts candidates were talking about big money in politics and other issues with the way we elect leaders. And voters rarely asked about these things. So when RepresentUs chapter leader, Cristian Morales of Boston, brought up the idea of a voter guide, the members of the chapter’s steering team jumped on it as a way to put these critical issues on the map during the election season.

But would candidates respond?

Looking for advice, the little group turned to the League of Women Voters/Massachusetts, a longtime producer of voter guides. The LWV told them not to expect a response rate over 30% due to the high number of uncontested races in the state. Without the name recognition of the LWV, the volunteers hoped for a 20% response rate.

To reach their goal, the volunteers joined forces with their counterparts in the western Massachusetts chapter of RepresentUs. Together they urged volunteers from allied groups, friends and family to email candidates with one message: I care about the issues raised in the RepresentUs voter guide questionnaire; please answer it. Candidates were peppered with emails and their answers started to come in.

Success in the numbers

The response rate topped 30% and the RepresentUs volunteers are thrilled. While it’s hard to measure the impact, they know for sure that more voters and candidates will be thinking about ideas for bolstering equal voice in government as a result of their work. And they’ve proven that a few committed people — working mostly by phone and email —can move the needle on political conversations and, hopefully, agendas for real action.

The voter guide can be found at https://volunteer.represent.us...

You can learn more about RepresentUs at www.represent.us