This doesn't appear to include student offices, which, especially at large state universities, are very powerful and misunderstood.
If you are a student, consider running for student office. It's likely (in fact almost certain) that your student government makes more decisions that impact your life and spends more of your money than the national government does.
They typically have multi-million dollar budgets, seats on powerful state-wide committees where tens or hundreds of millions are spent, and the ability to impact academic policy for students of the next generation.
Some also run sprawling field campuses, nature preserves or camps. I'm particularly fond of one that is run by the Albany Student Gov: Dippikill. Very special place.
Students in decades past fought very hard for the power and placement that today's student governments enjoy, and education "administrators" are always looking to carve them out and take them away. They need to be continually defended and used.
Although it can still be used as a bully pulpit and sometimes extract concessions by producing enough bad press or student anger, I think alas that a lot of what you mention in your last sentence has already happened. On the University of California Board of Regents, for example, students have 1 out of 26 seats, and in recent years are usually in the minority on votes, so the student representative is there more or less to cast a token protest vote against something that happens anyway. (The real power is held by a bunch of political nepotists, cronies, donors, and hedge-fund moguls who have no experience in education, and were appointed due to qualifications like "is Dianne Feinstein's husband" and "donated a lot of money to Arnie's campaign".)
"Almost certain" seems like an exaggeration. At my college (Yale), the "student government" was basically just a committee to plan Spring Fling. You can see their budget online:
> "Almost certain" seems like an exaggeration. At my college (Yale), the "student government" was basically just a committee to plan Spring Fling. You can see their budget online:
As a counterpoint, Columbia's student government is quite powerful.
There are multiple levels (with different domains of influence), but the most powerful is the student senate - each school is allotted two (I think) student senators, and they have the same level of authority as the senators representing the faculty, etc.
Columbia also has a long history of political activism and public protest, and the University Senate was actually established in the wake of the most famous of these[0], to provide students with a structured outlet for supporting or opposing university policies that did not involve literally occupying buildings on campus.
As far as elected representation within a private institution goes, it's not perfect, but it's pretty well-executed.
The Columbia undergraduate student government was also basically just party planners, in addition to being a feeble roadblock to university policies. The truly powerful group was the student-run Activities Board, which distributes student life fees to a hundred or so student clubs and groups. (Of course, all student governments and groups are subject to administrative oversight and override.)
> The Columbia undergraduate student government was also basically just party planners, in addition to being a feeble roadblock to university policies.
Not really, though the degree to which that's true depends on whether you're talking about CCSC, ESC, GSSC, or SGA. The student governments absolutely can effect meaningful policies of their own; I know because I worked on more than one such policy while I was there.
> The truly powerful group was the student-run Activities Board, which distributes student life fees to a hundred or so student clubs and groups
ABC (Activities Board at Columbia) is only one of the four funding umbrellas for student groups. And incidentally, ABC does not fund any student groups related to politics, religion, humanitarianism, or public activism. SGB is responsible for all of those, and SGB's funding decisions are fairly autonomous, as opposed to ABC's, which fall under more direct oversight from the atrociously-named F@CU.
Right right - I meant more at public universities. Presumably at Yale and other prestigious private schools, students (and student governments) have ways of exerting power other than the budget.
I'm not sure that's true, but I think that's a presumption that people make when thinking about education politics.
I'm Speaker of my student parliament at my college. It is not as grand as you describe it. We only get about $250,000/semester from the college. We are actually incorporated as a non-profit through our state's general assembly, so our college has limited control over us. We have limited seats on our college's committees, and we have committees of our own which are majority-student. Committees like the Board of Education in our state have one student member from all the public higher education institutions, and they're appointed by the president of the college rather than by our student government. Our student government hasn't made huge progress on any major student issue.
Apparently they're looking for volunteers (http://getinvolved.runforoffice.org/volunteer). I'm not involved with the project (although seriously considering volunteering), and it looks like they mostly just have scraped state/federal senate/congress/governor information and plugged it in, but aim to add more.
We have all of the positions in the following counties, as well as all Federal, State, State legislative positions:
County State Population
Los Angeles County CA 10,100,000
New York City NY 8,400,000
Cook County IL 5,200,000
Harris County TX 4,300,000
Maricopa County AZ 4,000,000
San Diego County CA 3,200,000
Orange County CA 3,100,000
Miami-Dade County FL 2,600,000
Dallas County TX 2,480,000
Riverside County CA 2,290,000
San Bernardino County CA 2,000,000
Clark County NV 2,000,000
King County WA 2,000,000
Tarrant County TX 1,900,000
Broward County FL 1,835,000
Bexar County TX 1,818,000
Santa Clara County CA 1,800,000
Wayne County MI 1,775,000
Alameda County CA 1,580,000
Philadelphia PA 1,500,000
Sacramento County CA 1,445,000
Palm Beach County FL 1,370,000
Nassau County NY 1,350,000
Cuyahoga County OH 1,270,294
Hillsborough County FL 1,267,775
Orange County FL 1,169,107
Fairfax County VA 1,130,000
Contra Costa County CA 1,066,000
St. Louis County MO 1,000,000
Honolulu County HI 980,000
Bergen County NJ 938,000
DuPage County IL 917,000
Duval County FL 886,000
Ventura County CA 839,000
Pierce County WA 819,700
Montgomery County PA 812,000
San Francisco County CA 800,000
Multnomah County OR 766,100
Washington DC 658,000
Denver CO 649,000
East Baton Rouge Parish LA 445,200
St. Louis City MO 318,400
Livingston Parish LA 134,000
Ascension Parish LA 114,000
Grand Forks County ND 69,000
Lee County IA 36,000
Eligibility to run for student offices is generally not at all tied to where your ZIP code of legal residence, which is the only criteria it uses. So, without substantial redesign of its search model, I don't see how it could meaningfully handle them.
Which isn't to say those offices aren't important at some schools, just doesn't seem like a good fit for the model of this tool.
The search already returns results for offices which you may be eligible for, not which you are eligible for.
For example, my results include my state's Attorney General office, despite there being a requirement that candidates be admitted to the state's bar for 5 years prior to running for office. The vast majority of searchers will not be eligible for that office. It seems reasonable that anyone living in a zip code within a geofence around a university could have those student government positions returned, but with eligibility requirements clearly stated.
In general, the eligibility requirements also need to be more clear. In my example, the bar requirement is real but wasn't listed on the site.
Yes, that's an issue that could some refinement, but it's different than the issue with student government where eligibility is tied to enrollment, not legal residency, which may be very remote from the institution.
So, for most student government positions at universities, would have to show up as possible eligible positions for all searchers with a model which uses zip code of residence as the only criteria and prefers risking false positives to false negatives.
That's pretty useless, which is why I say student government is a bad fit for the model.
> Where I went to school, becoming a student senator for a given club was a simple matter "Sure, I'll do it". It was fun.
Same here but getting anything done is tremendously difficult. Even something simple like extended hours for the cafeteria (it was a tiny school) takes multiple semesters with being bounced back and forth between administration and Sodexo. My understand is that they'll gladly (one time) throw money at you if you say the right words but they are very cautious about anything that sounds like a long term commitment.
I applied as a candidate for the local planning commission because I think that restrictive zoning is driving some portion of inequality in this country, and also has a lot of problems in terms of long term financial stability (see: Strong Towns). I've never done anything like that before; we'll see how it goes.
That's awesome! Are you keeping a journal of what's happening with it? Maybe we should stand up an invite-only Discourse site for people doing this kind of stuff.
Also, knowing you only on HN, but also knowing that means I probably know you better than most voters know any candidate for local office --- I'd totally vote for you.
It's an appointed (by the city council) position, so no voting.
Thanks for the kind words!
I'm not sure what the discourse/mailing list/whatever group would promote? Tech people getting involved in politics? We'd probably all be so busy arguing on the list that we wouldn't have time to get anything done!
I've found, on Slacks at least, that if you set an "all positivity no arguing" rule on a channel, then as long as there's some other channel people can use for that kind of stuff, the rule sticks. The same could go of a support group for first-time candidates: support and/or productive discussions only.
From my experience in the bay area, unless you're very politically active and connected you're not going to get appointed to the planning commission. Nor should you, if you have not been intimately involved with all the community stakeholders for a long time. Also, it's a hard thankless job.
I don't live in the bay area. I did my time there and I'd like to see my town (Bend, Oregon) not turn into a place like Boulder, with average house prices north of $600,000.
On a related note, Shea Silverman posted on his blog [0] about how he ran for office in an extremely cost effective manner. It was linked on HN about two months ago [1].
> This year I ran for Florida House of Representatives District 49 (Orlando). I lost, but I got 31% of the vote and I only spent $3000. My opponent got 69% of the vote and spent $100,000
He open sourced [2] several tools that he used to do this.
He advises participation in local hob-nobbing events (I presume this was a local Florida thing, but your local community may have similar), and More Facebook Advertising. He reminds us that signs should be big, and WILL be stolen. He also advised cultivating good relations with local media by doing press releases.
While he was running for a state office, you could probably use similar tactics for more local things.
My name is Jim Cupples and I work on RunForOffice.org Thank you for the suggestions and comments.
I'm a politics nerd that likes local government, and believe it has dormant power for movements. I wrote a piece called The Bottom Carries the Top that explains my thoughts on that stuff.
Anyway, I agree with many of the comments and we think the university positions is a great idea.
If you like, feel free to email me at jimcupples@gmail.com or cupples@nationbuilder.com
I tried looking at positions in my state (South Dakota district SD-13) and the state representatives and state senator seats have a 2016 date listed. Is there an issue getting good data for such a small state? I might be willing to help verify some of it.
Hey Jim, I just wanted to say that I personally would like to recommend this product, especially as it adds more offices and features. Great idea.
Before I share it widely, though, I'll probably wait for it to fix the issue of showing past elections as future, as that is very confusing for people who don't know term lengths off the top of their head.
Thanks very much! Yes, it is showing past results, and we probably won't get to fixing those for another 2 weeks. Some states have been completely refreshed, but we have around 30 more to go.
Thanks very much. You're right about including age requirements. We have the project in a stage where we just want to get it into people's hands to use. We have a lot of blank fields that we will go back to fill and make things more searchable.
It's great to hear what people are looking for. Thanks!
This looks like a fantastic work! I have pondered for a while on building software for political campaigns (albeit focused on Mexican independent politicians), and nation builder seems the closest to what I have in mind. Care to elaborate a bit on the state of political software and your experience in building and selling software for politicians?
I don't have as much experience building/selling software. I'm sure tha practically everyone on this board has better tech chops than me. I come from a poli-sci background and the work on this project is what exposed me to tech. I can happily speak to features that I'd like to see for political software, but when it comes to building software, I'm a poor resource.
Hi, Jim! Love the site, and I'm delighted that someone is offering this. It would be great if the page had the ability to offer feedback to you, but since you're on here I'll pass this along here. It would be really helpful if each office listed included the name and party affiliation (where appropriate) of the person currently holding that office. In many cases, my decision to explore running for an office will depend on whether I'm happy with the person representing me. Even better would be the name of the person holding the office as a Google link to that person's voting record, so we could click through and look at how that person has been doing in that office thus far.
Thanks for putting this together; I'll absolutely be keeping an eye on the site!
Not to pile on a ton of feature requests, I think the site is already great, but it would also be cool if it took age as an input, as some offices have age requirements.
This would be much more useful if they displayed some election statistics and information on incumbents and political parties. The stated purpose of the tool is:
> Today, 40% of state legislature races go uncontested and the problem is worse at the local level. There is a crisis of leadership occurring in our democracy. We need more people to lead. We need more people to run for office.
> Run for Office is a free service that provides all the tools you need to launch a successful campaign whether you are a seasoned veteran or first—time campaigner.
You won't "launch a successful campaign" if you are a nobody running against an incumbent who is supported by the dominant political party in a bright red or deep blue state. You'd need to be a seasoned veteran with wide name recognition who is very well connected, well liked, and also wealthy, but then you're not likely to be using this tool.
It's in the races where the incumbent is not running for reelection, the position is nonpartisan, or there's a lot of turnover that someone could say "Hey, I have a chance at that spot."
The key here is "who is supported by the dominant political party". The tea party gained so much clout because they got organized to contest internal elections and primaries inside the GOP.
It's much more efficient to leverage the existing party infrastructure than to run as a solo independent or try to create a 3rd party.
Party elections (for instance, county committee elections) draw much less turnout and can be swayed much more easily by an organized group.
You're correct in some regards, but the model of $=victory is not as consistent as it used to be.
I think of David Brat beating House Speaker Jared Cantor in 2014 as being the canary in the coalmine.
There's never an apples to apples comparison, but Cantor had Brat outraised by over 20 to 1, and Brat beat him. On top of that, campaign messages are more and more delivered and received via free mediums, like YouTube, which brings the cost of a campaign down tremendously.
This (local political action) is something I've found interesting for a while, but never enough to actually get involved. Seeing this made me look up some data for the area around me, since I was curious and the OP didn't have enough data for my area.
Apparently the town council elections are coming up soon, with several slots available. If I'm reading through this data correctly, it would take about 2% of the town's residents to vote for a council member to knock out the incumbents, based on last year's election. Someone somewhat active in the community can probably arrange that.
And "becoming active" can be as simple as starting to call up local clubs, meetups, universities, whatever, and asking to speak about how you can help them in x or y if you're elected. It can be talking to your neighbors or getting in with local bars and bands (depending on the issues your position will preside over). The Los Altos city council had a seat that was won over and incumbent with a difference of like 7 votes last election, these local elections are very accessible.
More generally, you're particularly unlikely to succeed as an independent if your motivation for running for office is "I want to find an office that I might be able to contest", as opposed to "I want to fix this issue, and I've discovered that running for this office is the best way to do it"
I know this might run somewhat counter to the point of the site, but I'd love more information about what the effective qualifications for filling the positions are. Obviously any moron can get elected, but that doesn't mean I'd feel particularly good about, for instance, running for SF Public Defender without being a lawyer, or city treasurer without any background or knowledge in finance.
I was actually thinking the same thing. Like it offered me the Attorney General position, but some quick googling shows me "...No person shall be eligible for election or appointment to the office of Attorney General unless he is a citizen of the United States, has attained the age of thirty years, and has the qualifications required for a judge of a court of record...". And I don't meet two out of three of those requirements.
At the very least the site should ask your age as well as your location. Otherwise, it'd show every US citizen as eligible to run for president, which obviously isn't true for anybody under, what, 35?
Or anyone who wasn't born a citizen. My wife came here when she was 2 but that makes her less of an American than someone who chose to be born here, apparently.
There's a powerful social permission / imposter syndrome thing that works against people running for office, so an effective thing you can do even if you yourself can't bring yourself to stand for office is to convince friends to do it, and offer to support their candidacies.
I've found it's remarkably easy to have that conversation with people. Ultimately, telling someone you'd support them if they ran for elected office is a pretty major compliment. And you don't really need any context or permission to bring it up; like saying "that's a nice jacket", you can say it any time. More importantly: when someone they know gives them permission, people actually will consider running.
I would much rather get 10 of my friends into local office around the country than run myself, so that's the goal I've set for myself. I'm making decent progress!
You or your friends should consider (and probably prefer) local administrative offices, like park districts or water reclamation. You don't need to be a subject matter expert to run for these --- that's not expected of you (source: friends who have these jobs). If you're wondering "why bother?", the answer is that having any kind of elected office magnifies your influence with other representatives and stakeholders. It's also great practice.
Running for the kinds of offices everyone has heard of --- Congress and Senate --- is extremely expensive (in the multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars) and, depending on the state you're in, might have a large component of building relationships with your state party. I say this not to discourage people from trying --- especially if you're thinking of running D in an unopposed R district or vice versa --- but to set expectations. Running your first time is easier than you probably think it is, as long as you pick the right office to run for.
If you're on a (recreational) Slack right now, consider opening up a channel and inviting people into it and spontaneously getting a couple people interested in running. I was on IRC channels in the 1990s that started companies that later sold for 9 figures (and the #!w00w00 people can tell you better stories). Getting a couple friends elected to their local library board seems like an extremely reasonable expectation to set for yourself.
If you're organizing something to get people to run for local office, I'm interested in talking/helping. I think there are a bunch of useful applications to be built here, and also a lot of opportunities for people to get together to share encouragement and notes.
True. And, if you see a news report about somebody whose positions you like deciding to run ... send them a campaign contribution. Running for office is quite costly these days, and no-strings-attached contributions are really helpful.
(Many contributions have strings attached. Yours doesn't have to.)
Yes. I'm specifically suggesting not running for federal office, but instead running for local office and using that position --- which is gettable --- as a base for further influence. It's not my idea; it's something a friend of mine, who has done it, is pushing.
I couldn't agree more. You said it perfectly. The federal offices and state offices, all that stuff is easy. The hard work, and where the opportunity is, is figuring out the obscure Water Districts, Port Commissions, and similar positions. Very winnable, and they create momentum.
Running might not be expensive, but I bet winning is.
My wild-ass guess (not a political science major) is that voters can be bucketed into the following broad groups:
A: People who vote straight party-line, no matter what. A toad could be on the ticket and they'd vote for it.
B: People who vote for whatever name they most recognize.
C: People who actually study the candidate's positions and make a rational choice.
Generously let's say A=80%, B=17% and C=3% of voters.
Whether or not you get A's vote depends entirely on what letter is next to your name--you have no control. B's vote is expensive because you need to carpet the area with saturation advertising in order for them to remember you when they fill out the form. C is so small that it's probably not worthwhile to do the legwork. So you end up spending tons of money hoping that you can get B to tip the scale towards you. At least that's how it looks to me.
> A: People who vote straight party-line, no matter what. A toad could be on the ticket and they'd vote for it.
Since the parents is discussing running for local office, I'm not sure why you think party comes in to play. Or perhaps this is a regional thing? In my city, party affiliations are not advertised/listed for positions such as city council, mayoral, parks board etc.
Running for statewide or federal office is extremely expensive. What I'm saying is, don't do that, at least for your first win. Instead, win a seat on your local library board or parks district.
I understand what you meant, I just wanted to get attention for my belief that we shouldn't be relying on special interest money at all to call it a democracy.
Can confirm that it really works. I suggested to an old mentor a couple years back that he should run for office. He eventually (somewhat reluctantly) did, and found that it was surprisingly easy to get into, even without a large network of influence. It's pretty positively telling that even he, a fairly socially awkward guy, could get as far as he did. Since lots of tech folk fit that mold, it would be great to see more like him run for office. Hint, hint, y'all. ;)
Btw - any thoughts on what kind of applications can be built here?
Really simple toolbox for establishing a credible website, donation bucket, social media presence, self hosted email, mailing list, voter canvassing lists, news outlet contacts?
Parties and big campaigns can set such things up for candidates, but could a functional - if less sophisticated - version of those tools be established for potential local candidates?
(Perhaps, I'm just ignorant and such a toolset already exists)
Yes, but also just things around granting people social permission to run. It's not crazy to suggest that social permission is a bigger obstacle for most elected offices than money is.
It's unlikely your local governments have added or subtracted a lot of positions since the last election, so just look at the 2017 elections on the list.
Yeah, and it isn't like it is Nov 9 and they didn't have a chance to update the data. It mostly had high level state and federal ones here (I know all of them already). Where are all of the local ones? Great Expectations on my part I guess...
Most people know they can run for federal and state offices, even if they don't know what district they are in (and this barely matters, as the election office will tell you); and while they don't know some of the more esoteric offices, those offices tend to not have much power.
What people usually don't know about is all of the local government positions that affect their daily lives: many of the things you care most about exist below the level of a city, and yet websites like this throw aside all of the water districts and park districts and commumity service districts as if they don't matter :/.
Honestly, as someone deeply involved in politics at this point, who burns a lot of time into trying to educate people as to how government works and how to get involved, I believe this website--which is so bad it didn't even include city council of a smaller city as a local result, returning only internal democratic party positions--can only do more harm than good.
We are definitely interested in including both. We do have coverage of about 55 very large counties, but that leaves a lot yet to work on. And, we will include all Tribal government positions that we come across. Thanks!
I ran for elected office previously. It was a very educational experience. It was a state level office. While I didn't win, I had fun and planned on doing it again (I got sick in 2012 and 2016).
It cost me about $200 for my campaign, most of which went to GoDaddy for hosting. So don't think that you need a billion dollars to run for office (except if you want to run for US President).
I always love technological solutions that ease the path forward to meaningful action.
I wonder if there's a way to algorithmically determine how a candidate with subpar funding could beat somebody established with many more (a playbook of kinds). That would be the next step forward -- sure, you can run, but it flips the dynamic when you're smart about running to win.
Yes to all of this. There are algorithms to be applied, we just need more/better data to fine tune them. Of course, it's politics, so it's more art than science, but there is a lot to be uncovered with patterns. Great thought.
Interesting idea for a site. However, is there a version of this for people in countries outside of the US? Because as someone in the UK, I'd love to know what elected offices I'd be elligible to run for over here.
And I'm sure people in places like Canada, Australia, France, etc would be interested in a similar site for their country as well.
Ha! Thank you for mentioning that. There is an Open Data org in Canada that we've been working with, and we are also assembling the GIS data for the UK. Hope to have it within the year.
I'm sure there's a similar one out there somewhere for Republicans, but since I want them to field bad candidates I will leave finding it as an exercise for the reader :-D
I have to get to work, but would love to hear from anyone that's interested in this stuff. We are looking forward to building an API and helping people continue to build.
Mostly, we want people to simply know what they can run for and how to get on the ballot.
Inaccuracies on the site are my fault. I work with amazing students, mostly from USC, and we put it together as best we can. The shapefile stuff is also sometimes wonky. A GIS student from UCLA is the awesome person behind that.
I don't think just accepting an address is enough. Many of these positions have age and residency requirements. Or other requirements. I know they want to make it quick, but I am not eligible (yet) for most of the positions they listed, and would rather focus on a position I can actually run for.
Pretty much. The first thing I noticed was "Start a 14-day free trial of NationBuilder, leadership software designed to help you win your election." Not a free license mind you, a free trial. This effort seems designed to feed business into the NationBuilder sales pipeline more than anything. If they offered an unlimited (users, duration, feature-set) license to candidates that are launched via this site then that might be a real public service. As it stands, it's marketing.
That's going to very much vary depending on the size of the jurisdiction of the office but for NC they only have state level positions which will all be full time.
As far as I know anything above a very small town position will be full time.
From the stats there, there are 10 states where legislator is 80% of a full-time job (avg. salary: $68,599), 23 where it's 70% of a full-time job (avg. salary: $35,326), and 17 where it's 54% of a full-time job (avg. salary: $15,984). In many of these states, legislators need to supplement their income with jobs in the off-season (only 9 state legislatures are year-round positions, and all of those are the ones that offer the highest salaries).
True but I think for the intent of the original question I think most of these offices are largely incompatible with a normal full time job. You'd likely need to be self employed or have an extremely flexible boss/employer because when you're working as a state representative or senator you won't be able to do you normal job.
I think it would be pretty easy to land one of those flexible jobs if you were a state rep or senator. I can imagine plenty of construction firms, law offices, NGOs, and other institutions would be happy to carve out a part time role for the benefit of having your ear and knowledge.
I didn't see it on the site, but there's also an advocacy group for science / STEM folks who want to run for the first time: http://www.314action.org/want-to-run/
This is a great demonstration of the ways that people with technical skills can contribute to improve their communities. Enabling others to exercise their civic duties is just as valuable as exercising them yourself.
Is there any contact information for the site itself? The "APPLICATION GUIDELINES" and "submit application to" information for one of the positions I just viewed is inaccurate...
I'd suggest a reword to "might be eligible" or "your residence qualifies for" or somesuch. Some offices have their own specific requirements, such as age or technical qualification.
For example, to run for California Attorney General, one "Must be admitted to practice before the state Supreme Court for at least five years immediately preceding election or appointment to the office".
Yes, you're correct. Attorney General, Treasurer positions, Law Enforcement positions, and a few others do require advanced degrees. We have plans to include that in our data. Thanks.
My comment is not a criticism at all! There is a point of diminishing returns on such projects where a pedantic correction can require loads of work. Great work.
A similar-concept project was posted here on HN this month:
I was previously appointed to one of my town's local boards, reviewing aesthetics of new development. It was very rewarding in that I got to advocate for "fair" outcomes, sometimes as a lone dissenting voice. I also learned a ton about both government and architectural design. If I could do this in my mid-20s, so could many others.
After recent marches and protests, and the real but not necessarily self-sustaining enthusiasm that they generated, people ask "but what now?"
And the answer to that is to run for your state legislature. It's there that voting rules, and support for incumbent national members of Congress, are set and enforced.
I've thought about this in the past. If I wanted to run for governor of my home state in 20 years, what are things that I could be doing today to move towards that goal? I'd assume it would be running for smaller offices to gain some political experience and creating relationships.
Great work!I would also include City Council and Local School Board. It would also be nice to list who the current office holder is and whether or not they ran unopposed.
This does not seem to include any local offices... it begins at the state level for me. There are many city and county positions that are better beginnings.
Dang. That's not the intention. We do have limited coverage regarding the local offices. We have done 50 of the largest counties in the US, which totals coverage of about 85 million Americans, however, that's only a quarter of the population.
The purpose of the project is to do the local offices. If we don't have any for your county/town, it's just a matter of us not having volunteers for there. Local offices, in my perspective, is where all the opportunity and value is at.
Why would you want to become a cog in a machine when you can build your own?
Many people run for office thinking they can change the fundamental culture entrenched around them. But then they realize that there are so many existing systems safeguarding the status quo, that one person can't do it. You'd need to hire a whole new administration.
Instead, what if organizations would contract with one another for services and respect each other's cultures as a take-it-or-leave-it kind of thing? Then market discipline would apply.
That's a really appealing platitude, but can you make it concrete?
What machine should each of us, individually, build? How will it function in a world where an overwhelming majority of people view their government (broadly) as legitimate? Why is someone in office necessarily a "cog" rather than someone with agency and the ability to influence the machine's overall direction?
The problem is more fundamental than that -- once you run for office, people will ask you questions on topics you had never considered before. And you will hear stories that will change your perspective on how governments try to solve problems.
Here's an example from my state's motorcycle rider's lobby --
"Would you support a law allowing motorcycles to proceed through red lights under low traffic conditions after making a reasonable safe stop?" (Because motorcycles don't always trip the sensors at intersections.)
That's just a taste. I have a large binder full of mailings from advocacy groups, printing companies (brochures and yard signs) and some of the official paperwork. And that was just the stuff that seemed worth keeping.
If you are a student, consider running for student office. It's likely (in fact almost certain) that your student government makes more decisions that impact your life and spends more of your money than the national government does.
They typically have multi-million dollar budgets, seats on powerful state-wide committees where tens or hundreds of millions are spent, and the ability to impact academic policy for students of the next generation.
Some also run sprawling field campuses, nature preserves or camps. I'm particularly fond of one that is run by the Albany Student Gov: Dippikill. Very special place.
Students in decades past fought very hard for the power and placement that today's student governments enjoy, and education "administrators" are always looking to carve them out and take them away. They need to be continually defended and used.