We’re in the home stretch, of an election that’s been ugly from the start and has gotten steadily uglier, while people struggle to get perspectives they can trust. The polls are volatile and close. Every vote will count in key states, both for the Presidency and key Senate, Governors’ and Congressional races. The results will determine Supreme Court appointments, climate change, tax policy, immigration, student debt, and every other critical issue. But it’s tempting to tune it all out and simply stay home.
That’s particularly true for those who’ve long since stopped hoping that elected leaders will deal with the array of national and global crises. It’s tempting to decide that the entire electoral arena is so corrupt and confusing as to not be worth engaging, particularly when the more ads and spin you encounter, the more your mistrust deepens.
Our national nonpartisan Campus Election Engagement Project works with America’s 20 million students, who are often among those often missing in action in our closest elections. “Everyone’s lying. Everybody’s spinning,” they say. “They all have handlers, so you don’t know who to believe.” To overcome this withdrawal, we work with colleges and universities to help students of all political perspectives register, learn about the issues, and participate at the polls. And we produce nonpartisan candidate guides to address the cynical myth that “they’re all the same.” Our guides sum up candidate positions in concise, side-by-side comparisons so readers can decide based on their own values who they want to vote for. Students of widely differing beliefs have found them enormously helpful in sorting out candidate stands.
But they’re not just useful for students. We all face challenges in sorting through political evasions and lies. So we’re also posting our guides more generally, including here on The Huffington Post. Here are guides for the presidential race and key Senate and gubernatorial races. We hope you’ll check out the major candidates for your state and forward to friends who are on the fence on who to support, or whether to vote at all. (You can also find a 4-way presidential guide, a guide on the importance of the 2016 election for Supreme Court decisions, and several Spanish language guides here.)
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US Senate Guides
Governor Guides