What is VoteHelp?
What are other people saying about VoteHelp?
How are your results calculated?
Why aren't the questions more specific?
Why are the questions biased towards (liberals/conservatives)?
How can I contact VoteHelp?
Can I help/join VoteHelp?
What are the terms/conditions for this site?
I received an error on January 8th or 9th.
interested in taking over VoteHelp?
What is VoteHelp?
The goal of this site is to help people wade through the mountain of data on
candidates to make informed voting decisions. We wanted the
interface to be as simple as possible, but we also wanted it to be
flexible enough to capture the variety of ways that people make voting
decisions. We attempted to make the site as impartial as possible
and have had conservatives, liberals, and libertarians give input in its design.
Still, impartiality is a somewhat relative state, but we can honestly say that we tried.
This site is a project of Clark Benson, Ravi Iyer, Suzanne Soule and Jennifer Nairne.
Thanks also go out to Doug Stenstrom and Stacy Tagawa.
Based loosely on a design by Matt Hollis ©2006
What are other people saying about VoteHelp?
You can read more about what others have said about VoteHelp using these links:
• Tara Met Blog
• The Daily Elephant
• The Zhen Blog
• WJBC - Illinois
• Ron Paul for President Blog
• GOP Vixen
• Dirty Harry's Place
More via Google
How are your results calculated?
All agree/disagree statements are given a point value on a seven point scale with 1 being strongly disagree and 7 being
strongly agree. The maximum distance between any 2 candidates is 6 points. We then apply your importance ratings to
this distance score and compare the actual weighted distances between your views and the candidates' views versus the maximum
possible distance between your views and the theoretical worst candidate. The result is the % match score we present on our results page.
Why aren't the questions more specific?
There are a number of ways to create such a tool and we always have to balance usability with power.
The only way to get the variance between candidates in some cases is to ask the question generally
and then rate the candidates to specific degrees. If we made the questions more specific,
we would end up with basic yes or no answers that can't be scaled to match the nuances we are attempting to capture without requiring
users to answer 100s of questions. We agree the questions could be more specific, and we continually refine things, but just know that
there are tradeoffs in any decision and we receive emails all the time asking us to change questions in differing directions.
Why are the questions biased towards (liberals/conservatives)?
If you feel a question is biased, please feel free to email us. While we often get conflicting emails, we make every effort to
try to address any issues of bias and continually refine our questions toward that end. We have run the questions by
a number of people across the political spectrum to create the questions in their current format.
How can I contact VoteHelp?
Contact us at the below emails depending on your question:
Website use issues - webmaster at votehelp.org
Candidate stance questions - data at votehelp.org
Business inquiries - business at votehelp.org
Press inquiries - press at votehelp.org
Everything else - general at votehelp.org
What are the terms/conditions for this site?
ALL MATERIALS AND SERVICES IN THIS SITE AND THIRD-PARTY SITES TO WHICH
IT LINKS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. THE
CONTENT PUBLISHED ON THIS WEB SITE MAY INCLUDE INACCURACIES OR
TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. CHANGES ARE PERIODICALLY MADE TO THE
INFORMATION HEREIN. VOTEHELP MAY MAKE IMPROVEMENTS
AND/OR CHANGES IN THIS WEB SITE AT ANY TIME INCLUDING CHANGES TO THESE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS. VOTEHELP MAKE NO
REPRESENTATIONS AND, TO THE FULLEST EXTENT ALLOWED BY LAW, DISCLAIM
ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
REGARDING THE SUITABILITY OF THE INFORMATION; THE ACCURACY,
RELIABILITY, COMPLETENESS OR TIMELINESS OF THE CONTENT, SERVICES,
PRODUCTS, TEXT, GRAPHICS, LINKS, OR OTHER ITEMS CONTAINED WITHIN THIS
SITE, OR THE RESULTS OBTAINED FROM ACCESSING AND USING THIS SITE
AND/OR THE CONTENT CONTAINED HEREIN. VOTEHELP DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE
FUNCTIONS CONTAINED IN THE MATERIALS WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR
ERROR-FREE, THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED, OR THAT THIS SITE,
INCLUDING BULLETIN BOARDS OR THE SERVER THAT MAKES IT AVAILABLE, ARE
FREE OF VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS. THE USER ASSUMES THE
ENTIRE COST OF ALL NECESSARY MAINTENANCE, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
Use of this site is at your own risk. This site may contain advice,
opinions, and statements of various information providers and content
providers. VOTEHELP does not represent or endorse the accuracy or
reliability of any advice, opinion, statement or other information
provided by any information provider or content provider, or any user
of this site or other person or entity. Reliance upon any such
opinion, advice, statement, or other information shall also be at your
own risk. Neither VOTEHELP nor its affiliates, nor any of their
respective agents, employees, information providers or content
providers shall be liable to any User or anyone else for any
inaccuracy, error, omission, interruption, timeliness, completeness,
deletion, defect, failure of performance, computer virus,
communication line failure, alteration of, or use of any content
herein, regardless of cause, or for any damages resulting therefrom.
I received an error on January 8th or 9th.
Due to a surge of traffic on the evening of January 8th, our site experienced a technical glitch that caused an error message and
showed inaccurate results.
We regret this occurence and apologize for the confusion created. The error was fixed within 12 hours and steps have been taken to ensure
it does not happen again.
Information is the currency of democracy.
- Thomas Jefferson
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