Rick Beggs and Debbie Wuthnow welcome you to the Compass
Rick Beggs Welcome to the Compass, navigating the public square together with faith, truth and conviction. We are so glad that you've chosen to give us part of your Saturday. Thank you for being with us at the Compass. I'm Rick Beggs and my co host, Debbie Wethnow, the president of iVoterGuide. Say hey Debbie.
Debbie Wuthnow Hey friends. Good to see you. Be back with you again once one more week.
Rick Beggs And we're actually broadcasting or taping this from a, conference. In what city are we in? Washington D.C. in Washington D.C. i feel like we're traveling all the time. Yeah. And so you may even get to hear a little bit of background as we are on Radio Row, which allows you to hear a whole.
Debbie Wuthnow We feel very professional.
Rick Beggs Oh yeah, yeah. Who knows? We know that's not true. Anyway, we're so glad you're here.
We have a question questionnaire on iVoterGuide that voters answer
You know, the last, week we talked about the reason we have a question questionnaire on I Voter Guide. Do you mind giving us a summation? Well, of what you remember we did
Debbie Wuthnow last week, if I can remember. No, we, I mean, the questionnaire is, it's what voters really most want to see. They want to see what candidates will say in answer to questions about policy positions. There's a lot of voter guides out there that all they are is a questionnaire. so we, we give every candidate the opportunity to answer those questions. And so we have a questionnaire, we send it to candidates so that they can answer that. But it's still, we talked about that, in our evaluation of all the data points that we have, it's actually the least important data point when we're trying to land on our evaluation.
Rick Beggs Well, it's funny because you start with it's what our people want to see. But it's the least in regards to.
Debbie Wuthnow It's been interesting because they're like, how can you not rate them? They haven't answered, but it's just one data point and it's what they say and we'd rather look at what they do.
How do you find 13, 15,000 candidates their email addresses
Rick Beggs Well, so we talked about why the questionnaire exists.
Rick Beggs And then we talked about where it fits in the research.
Rick Beggs But something we didn't get to last week, which I, think is really important, is how in the world do they get the questionnaire? I gotta tell you, before I get on the show, I was just thinking in my mind, how in the world do you find 13, 15,000 candidates their email addresses so you can send them a little personal note and ask them
Debbie Wuthnow about political stalkers if you Think about it.
Rick Beggs Oh, that's. That's kind of creepy. But so.
Debbie Wuthnow But that is the hard. It is hard.
Rick Beggs Okay, so when you actually have a team that's researching how to find these people.
Debbie Wuthnow Well, yeah, well, we've talked about. We have a. We have a paid team of staff of researchers, and so we have a lead researcher in each state. And one of their primary jobs is to find out not only who are the candidates, but how do we reach out to them. So they have a bunch of resources. They look at the candidates filing papers. You know, they Internet search, there's green papers and different websites. But, you know, because our questionnaires are emailed, we got. We gotta be able to reach them.
Rick Beggs Okay, but walk me through this, because this is kind of humorous, actually, because what candidate doesn't want to be found?
Debbie Wuthnow Isn't it amazing?
Rick Beggs So, I mean, we run into that all the time where they can't be found. We don't know how to reach them.
Debbie Wuthnow Right. Yeah, well, it's kind of embarrassing in a way. Sometimes candidates will not put an address or they'll put an address on their filing papers or they'll maybe. Sometimes they'll leave a blank or they'll put an address they're not reading. And so we're reaching out to this email address, you know, multiple times to say, we need you to answer the survey. Why don't you do it in your own words? Log in on this email and. And we get crickets. And we find out later that the address they put on their filling, they're like, well, we don't. We don't. That's not my email address. It's the wrong one. We're like, well, but it's what you put on your paper. So, you know, we want to give them a chance to answer.
Rick Beggs You want to be elected. Isn't that what you're really doing?
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah, yeah, in a way. It's. The fact that they left that off is maybe not the best sign of how they're going to be and responding to constituents or, you know.
Rick Beggs Well, we could spend all day talking about how goofy that is. However. But when a candidate does get it.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah.
Rick Beggs What happens then? Because they. Isn't there a time window that they have to get this filled out and back to us at ivoterguide.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah, we have a pretty common, complex project for creating voter guides. So there's a window after we have to know who all the candidates are. We have a candidate filing deadline and that, and then we want to verify their email addresses. So then it's about a seven to ten days window that the candidates get emailed a link to answer their questionnaire. So it's all done in their own words. We're not, you know, transcribing what they've written on a piece of paper. It's. They type in all those answers. So if something's wrong, it's not on us. They did it themselves and they answered it.
Rick Beggs So when they get the questionnaire they start filling it in.
Rick Beggs And those answers are populated right away back to us.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah, we have a database that we're populating with all of the research. So every answer, as they click to the next question, it saves what they've entered, it logs what they've done. So we actually can go back and see if they change an answer, but we leave what, you know, what their final response was.
Rick Beggs Yeah, we can go back and we can.
Debbie Wuthnow It's interesting. We should have a. We're talking about.
Rick Beggs Yeah, well, I'm thinking if I. Let's say I'm a candidate and I'm There's 30 plus questions and I'm not going to do this in one setting. So let's say I get through question 5, 6, 7 and then I walk away. The answers all the way through seven are already recorded and have been. They're saved in our system.
Debbie Wuthnow Even the candidate can go back and look at them and adjust that if they want to.
Rick Beggs Yeah, but then we know if they pick up where they left it as well.
Debbie Wuthnow That is true.
Rick Beggs So do we have their first answer and their second answer?
Debbie Wuthnow We have it in our database, but what gets populated is their final answer.
Rick Beggs Okay, but you'll be able to see
Debbie Wuthnow they don't hear any music or anything. It says final answer. But that is they do get to review it and you know, kind of submit the questionnaire at the end.
Rick Beggs So I have 10 days to fill this out and I can go back and forth until those questions are answered and then I guess I submit. So what happens? I mean we got all this information now. and would you say there's a percentage of candidates that actually answer the
Debbie Wuthnow questionnaire and it's not all. Not unsurprisingly. And we track it and it's not
Rick Beggs bad if they didn't. It's just more helpful if it is. Because I even said in the last show that's my default for breaking a
Debbie Wuthnow tie is that question in primaries and things like that. It's, it's the differentiator. Right. For some voters of what can't.
Our average is probably 30 to 40% of candidates who answer the questionnaire
So we have We've had instances of as high as 70% of candidates who answer their questionnaire. We have incidences where nobody does or, you know, it's 10, 20. Our. Our average is probably 30 to 40% of candidates who answer the questionnaire. And honestly, I would say to you, the listeners, you could help drive that percentage up by candidates that you encounter and just saying, hey, I love to use ivoter guide. Please answer their questionnaire.
Rick Beggs Yeah. okay, so we get all that information back. Now what?
Debbie Wuthnow Well, that. At that point, I think our data collection phase is over and we move into candidate evaluation. I think at that point we also send it to the candidate to review all the data we've gathered. So they get a quality control check, I guess, of all the data. They get a preview to see. And this is all before any of it goes public. And then our panelists start to look at all of that and assign ratings. So that's, that's the process.
Rick Beggs And, once we've evaluated, we let them know what our finding is.
Debbie Wuthnow they. I'm trying to think. The process has changed over time. So they get to quality control the data. They see the, the evaluation when it goes public. So they are notified that we've released it. But, and that is when, if they don't like the rating, they would let us know that they're. They don't quality control what we've rated at. They get to quality control the data we use for the evaluation.
Rick Beggs Okay, so, now we have all this information. We've aggregated everything that we have that's public record. Now we have this questionnaire that hopefully 35% have answered. And so we have all our information now to make a good decision.
Debbie Wuthnow That's the, the goal.
Rick Beggs Okay. So once that is done, that's, that's the final. That's the thing that we produce and we send out.
Debbie Wuthnow it is, Yeah. I don't know what else you. Sometimes we'll have candidates who come back and let us later that I meant to answer that question wrong or I meant, you know, I think, oh, I didn't mean to say that. And so we do leave the answer how they've answered it, when they answered the questionnaire. And we might add a staff note, an addendum. Yeah, I call it an annotation. So it'll say. It'll say under that question, it'll say, my vocabulary is better. I didn't. I can't say it spell it. But, it'll say staff note. You know, candidate, contact us later. And let us know they meant to say, because we, we don't change the candidate's answers. It is their own word. So if that's what they did, if, if they didn't read carefully to see the way the question was phrased or something like that, Ah, the voters get to see that.
We have judicial surveys and school board surveys and education surveys
Rick Beggs So if I'm running for a, congressional district or a, senate seat or a, federal position, am I getting the same questionnaire that judges or school board or city council or what. What are we looking at here? Because they're different jobs, different purposes, different
Debbie Wuthnow responsibilities, different levels of authority, different issues. So, no, we start, when we update the questionnaire every cycle, every election cycle. And we start by updating the. What I would call the congressional questionnaire, which is the one that goes to senate and Congress. And that's kind of our baseline for what I would call our statewide and state legislator survey. and those are. They overlap greatly. They're, they're mostly aligned, but there's just some issues that are federal issues and different ones at state level. But then we also, as you said, have judicial. Sorry, we have judicial surveys and school board surveys and education surveys.
Rick Beggs And so what would be on the congressional one that might be different that we would find later for school board? I mean, I, I'm thinking it's a federal office. So we have some big questions from a federal perspective.
Debbie Wuthnow Probably national security type of questions, federal budgetary, budget types of questions. yeah, the, the health care, health care economy. I mean, there's different economy questions at the state level just because. Different income tax and things like that. And in fact, even we, we will. And have the ability to customize surveys by state. So, you know, we might have written it. There's times where we've had questions about, you know, should your state balance the budget or should they, you know, reduce income tax? Well, that state might not have income tax or they might have an, amendment requires a balanced budget. So we can take that questionnaire off. So we have, such incredible flexibility in types of questionnaires and customizing by office and customizing by state just so that we're asking the questions relevant to that specific race.
Rick Beggs So how would that differ than, let's say for a judicial one? Because you have, you know, state. States are real different on how they make decisions about Supreme Court or who's. How they are appointed. So what question would you get differently if you were a judicial candidate?
Debbie Wuthnow Well, and I will say judges. Initially we had them pretty similar. The questionnaires and judges would come back and say I can't answer a question on something I might rule upon. So they basically wouldn't answer any of
Rick Beggs your questions like taking the Fifth?
Debbie Wuthnow Pretty much. So, yeah. Because they don't want to predicate or prejudice, prejudice themselves as to how they might rule on something. So the judicial survey, we, we have a staff member who's a lawyer, so we kind of worked on, she asks them to give their opinions on cases and case law and rulings that have been out there. So you know, ask about Obergefell, ask about Roe v. Wade, ask about, you know, any of those procedural types of things. So more on the judicial philosophy than specifically on, you know, national security, health care types of issues.
Rick Beggs Yeah, they may care personally, but they don't care their job.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah, yeah.
Rick Beggs Well then that takes us down as we go to the lower levels or state levels where you have state, representatives or city councils or school board. Those will be more localized in regards to questions you're asking about. That makes it really difficult because every state has different things that they're dealing with. Some states that may be gambling. In that state they already got it. So we don't talk about that anymore.
Debbie Wuthnow And sometimes we even work with an organization in a state that's maybe a policy group that'll be a partner and as part of that partnership they get to customize maybe to trade out a couple questions for the issue they're really focusing on, in that state in that year. So. And then in the school board questionnaire, we're, you know, getting down into things that impact our kids and you know, safety officers in schools and library, books and things like that that parents want to know more about where the school board, that person stands.
Rick Beggs So I'm going to make a statement. You don't even know I'm going to say this. So we're going off script here. script. But I, yeah, we don't script. I don't know what you. What are you talking about? What's a script? the older I get, the more important to me are school board races.
Rick Beggs And city councils. Because that affects me now, affects my kids, that affects my grandkids.
Debbie Wuthnow It's the future.
Rick Beggs Yeah, it is the future. And so I'm always amazed that that there's, there hasn't seemed to been the effort put in to those types of things. I know we're trying to change that
Debbie Wuthnow is why Voter guy.
Rick Beggs but those are more important to the common. Well, and it's citizen.
Debbie Wuthnow It's almost like we didn't understand the importance of it. There's a friend who just walked by. Remember, we're on Radio Row.
Rick Beggs But, you don't have to wave at everybody. Oh, that's a little much.
Debbie Wuthnow Only my friends. And there's not very many. No. So, to me, it's almost like as I got older, you know, when I was a kid, I took history and I did fine in it, but I didn't appreciate it. But as I get older, I appreciate history, and it's the same thing. I don't understand. We didn't understand the importance of it and how important it was until we start to see its impact, on our kids and what that does to the rest of, American culture.
School board races are important because it affects the next generation of Americans
Rick Beggs Well, and while we're talking here, and I don't want to get too far ahead, but even yesterday, when you presented at the Conversation Conference, you talked about a real flash issue that when I looked at it, you had the big number 6% on the board up on the screen in your PowerPoint. And I thought, oh, my gosh, that's determining our school board races.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah. Are you trying to tease for a future topic?
Rick Beggs Well, I'm actually thinking that we ought to have a school board show or two.
Debbie Wuthnow Oh, I'm sure we'll come back to it a lot.
Rick Beggs But even the judges as well. I mean, I. I think those two things are separately different than all the other.
Debbie Wuthnow particular enough that we should dive a little deeper.
Rick Beggs Yeah. And we. We do have expertise on our own team here. We do at, AFA or AFA action that we could bring in.
Debbie Wuthnow And we will.
Rick Beggs Yeah. So anyway, but I. I just. That's sort of my bent right now about voting. I want to make sure people understand just how important school board races are, because that affects us now, whatever the president may decide. And yes, I want to make sure it's, a person that I want leading our country.
Debbie Wuthnow Even if you don't have kids in school.
Rick Beggs I know.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah. Because it's the next generation. It's peer groups, it's everything. Could be spouses for your kids.
Rick Beggs Well, and, you know, we're not teaching things like even we're talking about right now. I mean, we've said this probably at nauseam on this show. We don't teach civics anymore. We don't teach the things about even economics.
Debbie Wuthnow I don't think that we did. We assume it's like it is, but it is.
Rick Beggs It was required of us. And that's not the case anymore. So that's why school board races are important. there's a section in there, too, on the questionnaire that talks about them.
Debbie Wuthnow or you mean the about you section?
Rick Beggs The about you section. But it would be hard to say about you when I'm once talking to you, talking about them. So. But they have to answer questions about themselves. Walk me through some of that.
Debbie Wuthnow well, it's basically, you know, tell us about ourselves. What are your top three policy issues? I love the question. We find it very illuminating in rating candidates, we ask them to rate themselves. How would you describe yourself? From very conservative. You know, where do you land on the political spectrum? And, you know, we'll look at that when we're rating them. I mean, if they call themselves a moderate, maybe that's the right rating, you know. But if they say they're conservative, I will say that we do dive deeper. We're looking for the evidence and the proof and their positions on a bunch of issues, but we can kind of see a little into. Into the character of how they're portraying, you know, trying to portray themselves. So that's an important about you question. Background questions we do ask, you know, is there anything criminally that we should know about you? Right.
Rick Beggs Yeah. Shouldn't that be on the forum when you sign up to try to run for office?
Debbie Wuthnow You would think that would be something that's there. And I mean, gosh, what happened to Graham Platner? I mean, there's. There's still stuff that happens that you don't know about. So it's just asking, is there anything that the voters need to know about you? Have you been convicted of something, especially a sexual crime, that voters need to know about?
Rick Beggs Sort of like the last question somebody asked you in a job interview. Is there anything we didn't ask you that we should have asked you?
Debbie Wuthnow No, not at all.
Rick Beggs Please don't make me go deeper. I, know that, the questionnaire has less value when we rate the candidates, but my goodness, it is so helpful.
Debbie Wuthnow Oh, super, super, super. Yeah.
Rick Beggs Yeah. And it doesn't surprise me that people who use I voterguide, that's where they go to, maybe even first. I, try not to go there first. I really try to go there last.
Debbie Wuthnow It's kind of like, you know, when you go at the grocery store and you go to buy milk, is that ever in the front of the store? No, it's way in the back. Right. They want you to walk by everything else so that the items that people want most.
Rick Beggs I'm that guy. I'm that guy that they're grabbing. Because I'm looking at 12 other things,
Debbie Wuthnow and I only went in for Milky send you for, like, two things. You come with 10.
Rick Beggs is this an announcement, doing this on the air? Yes, that's me. And you know what? That's how they play grocery stores. I'm that guy.
Debbie Wuthnow Well, we kind of do the same thing.
We start updating the questionnaire way before where you. So every cycle. Before you're thinking about the next election cycle
So we've got the questionnaire down at the bottom of the page, so you have to at least see everything else that's there to get to. Oh, there is this button, but don't click it. If you click on the blue buttons at the top, it'll navigate you down. But that's kind of. Our concept is to show you visually, the importance of the data points by putting the scorecards and then the campaign finance and the endorsements and the other information. And then down at the bottom is
Rick Beggs the question, I would think, over time. And let's just take presidential races. You know, every four years, we're voting again, and the current events, the political situation isn't what it was really. Yes, I'm, Captain obvious. But because of that, the questions probably have to change.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah.
Rick Beggs Every cycle.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah. So every cycle. And actually, we. We start updating the questionnaire way before where you. Before you're thinking about the next election cycle is when we have. We will start. So we'll have an election in November and by next summer. We're working on the questionnaire to update it for the 2028 cycle. It takes us, there was a year that we would have all these. Each meeting was two hours in length, and I swear to you, we had a total of at least 10, if not 20 of these meetings with our team. So we start by, what are all the issues that are out there? Are there things. We're not even covering that topic. are there questions that, gosh, this kind of dropped off the radar. I mean, think about before COVID happened, who would have asked a question about vaccine mandates or masks? Right. So it's kind of like making sure we add that. and, you know, then again, on the other side, President Trump gets elected and just locks down the southern border. We used to have a question that said, should the southern border be secured when we had Biden in office? So we're like, well, we don't really need that one anymore. We can. We can pivot that to, you know, maybe an immigration question or something else along those same type of lines. So we try to cover as many issues as are important to voters. We Try to cover, different. The way phrase. The way we phrase the questions. We try to have it so that strongly agree is not the conservative answer in every case. We want the candidates to really pay attention and answer the questions thoughtfully. and then we add questions that we haven't covered. So ivf. We added a question about, you know, how do you treat the embryos? Comstock Act.
Rick Beggs Yeah. I mean, my mind's wandering because you go back to. We didn't used to have critical race theory.
Debbie Wuthnow Right.
Rick Beggs So that wouldn't be a question to ask. And now it's populated in our school system.
Debbie Wuthnow Well. And even financially, ESG investing was a very big topic, and then that kind of just got resolved and so we dropped that one off. So we do try to pay attention. But you have to remember we're finalizing that questionnaire. We have to finalize it probably around Thanksgiving of the year, before the big election year, because the primaries start so early that we're sending out questionnaires by November, December, for the primaries that happen early in 2028. I can't even imagine. We're not even to 2026 yet. But, yeah, that's what's on the horizon.
Rick Beggs Well, and I remember when the electoral college was a big thing that we talked about during the presidential elections. Or it's still a police.
Debbie Wuthnow some people talk about that. Yes.
Rick Beggs But I mean, you can see how it's sort of a tide that rolls. Yeah. Defunding the police. So, okay, so we have all the questions. They've answered all that stuff. We have the right questions that we put out there. And now we have a accumulation of information that allows people to read through every detail that we have. Have put together so that as many things as that we could turn over every stone that we could turn over. Somebody would have a question, say, well, how about this? Well, it's. If it's not in the questionnaire, it's probably been gathered somewhere in aggregating all this public information.
Debbie Wuthnow That section has a really descriptive title, other information.
Rick Beggs It's sort of like your junk drawer at your kitchen.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah, it's like that didn't get caught anywhere else. So that's where we'll place, you know, interview links, questionnaires. They've answered somewhere else. So we try to give a place to put all political intelligence we can find on. On the candidates so that we can gather that together, both for our panelists as they rate, but also to voters so that they can decide, especially in the primaries where it's hard to decide Between.
Get your name on ivoterguide's list, not only because
Rick Beggs Well, as we come to the close of this, particular show about the questionnaire, I want to say to people, get your name on ivoterguide's list, not only because you can find out about your candidates, but even more importantly, what it does for you to be on the mailing system so you can read about the different things that we're willing to talk about that I don't think a lot of places are willing to talk about.
Debbie Wuthnow No, we're pretty unique in that.
Rick Beggs Yeah. And so, we're just grateful, that people would even come listen to us. Debbie, you and me.
Debbie Wuthnow Come on. It's fun.
Rick Beggs It is. We're trying to enjoy it. Anyway, what is that sound that we hear? Debbie?
Tuesday, August 11, there will be six primary elections across the country
Debbie Wuthnow Tuesday, August 8th. We're back in election season. So next Tuesday there are Hawaii, you have an election, but you don't have any contested candidates in the Republican primary. So you might have contested candidates further down the ballot that I Voter guide is not covering. so if you do check it out and go vote on Tuesday, August 11, there will be six primary elections. We are certainly back in the throw of it. South Carolina, you have a special election for the U.S. senate seat, that was vacated sadly by Lindsey Graham. Wisconsin, you have an election on that Tuesday. Your polls are open from 7:00am to 8:00pm Vermont, your election is finally here. Polls open at 5:00am M. And they close it. Glad I'm not an election worker in Vermont. And closing at 7:00pm Minnesota, you have, an election as well. Polls open at 7am close at 8pm Connecticut, polls are open from 6am to 8pm And Alabama, you have a special election for four different congressional districts and your polls open at 7am Close at 7pm but we also have early voting going on in multiple states. Alaska, your early voting is underway. Your election will be on the 17th. Wyoming, early voting is underway. Your primaries on the 18th. Pennsylvania, you have a special general election for House District 12. Ballots must be received by 8pm on the 18th. And then Florida, finally, you're getting in the mix. Early voting begins today for your primary election on August the 15th. That does include some school board coverage, so check that out@ivoter guide.com and in Arkansas, early voting is, begins on is the 11th through. Wait, the 11th through the 17th for a special election. And your polls open at 8:30 in the morning. That's it for the.
Rick Beggs I cannot believe you have that all memorized.
Debbie Wuthnow I'm amazing. I am amazing.
Rick Beggs Well, you have been listening to the official radio show of iVoterGuide. It's called the Compass. And you can reach [email protected] or Debbie, how can they reach us off the compass?
Debbie Wuthnow They can email us at, compassivoterguide, dot com. Send any questions you have. We will answer them on the air or my team will get right back to you.
Rick Beggs Well, thank you to Brent Austin, who is our producer. And remember, on the Compass, our true north will always be Jesus. Thank you for tuning in. It.
Rick Beggs and Debbie Wuthnow welcome you to the Compass
Rick Beggs Welcome to the Compass, navigating the public square together with faith, truth and conviction. We are so glad that you've chosen to give us part of your Saturday. Thank you for being with us at the Compass. I'm Rick Beggs and my co host, Debbie Wethnow, the president of iVoterGuide. Say hey Debbie.
Debbie Wuthnow Hey friends. Good to see you. Be back with you again once one more week.
Rick Beggs And we're actually broadcasting or taping this from a, conference. In what city are we in? Washington D.C. in Washington D.C. i feel like we're traveling all the time. Yeah. And so you may even get to hear a little bit of background as we are on Radio Row, which allows you to hear a whole.
Debbie Wuthnow We feel very professional.
Rick Beggs Oh yeah, yeah. Who knows? We know that's not true. Anyway, we're so glad you're here.
We have a question questionnaire on iVoterGuide that voters answer
You know, the last, week we talked about the reason we have a question questionnaire on I Voter Guide. Do you mind giving us a summation? Well, of what you remember we did
Debbie Wuthnow last week, if I can remember. No, we, I mean, the questionnaire is, it's what voters really most want to see. They want to see what candidates will say in answer to questions about policy positions. There's a lot of voter guides out there that all they are is a questionnaire. so we, we give every candidate the opportunity to answer those questions. And so we have a questionnaire, we send it to candidates so that they can answer that. But it's still, we talked about that, in our evaluation of all the data points that we have, it's actually the least important data point when we're trying to land on our evaluation.
Rick Beggs Well, it's funny because you start with it's what our people want to see. But it's the least in regards to.
Debbie Wuthnow It's been interesting because they're like, how can you not rate them? They haven't answered, but it's just one data point and it's what they say and we'd rather look at what they do.
How do you find 13, 15,000 candidates their email addresses
Rick Beggs Well, so we talked about why the questionnaire exists.
Rick Beggs And then we talked about where it fits in the research.
Rick Beggs But something we didn't get to last week, which I, think is really important, is how in the world do they get the questionnaire? I gotta tell you, before I get on the show, I was just thinking in my mind, how in the world do you find 13, 15,000 candidates their email addresses so you can send them a little personal note and ask them
Debbie Wuthnow about political stalkers if you Think about it.
Rick Beggs Oh, that's. That's kind of creepy. But so.
Debbie Wuthnow But that is the hard. It is hard.
Rick Beggs Okay, so when you actually have a team that's researching how to find these people.
Debbie Wuthnow Well, yeah, well, we've talked about. We have a. We have a paid team of staff of researchers, and so we have a lead researcher in each state. And one of their primary jobs is to find out not only who are the candidates, but how do we reach out to them. So they have a bunch of resources. They look at the candidates filing papers. You know, they Internet search, there's green papers and different websites. But, you know, because our questionnaires are emailed, we got. We gotta be able to reach them.
Rick Beggs Okay, but walk me through this, because this is kind of humorous, actually, because what candidate doesn't want to be found?
Debbie Wuthnow Isn't it amazing?
Rick Beggs So, I mean, we run into that all the time where they can't be found. We don't know how to reach them.
Debbie Wuthnow Right. Yeah, well, it's kind of embarrassing in a way. Sometimes candidates will not put an address or they'll put an address on their filing papers or they'll maybe. Sometimes they'll leave a blank or they'll put an address they're not reading. And so we're reaching out to this email address, you know, multiple times to say, we need you to answer the survey. Why don't you do it in your own words? Log in on this email and. And we get crickets. And we find out later that the address they put on their filling, they're like, well, we don't. We don't. That's not my email address. It's the wrong one. We're like, well, but it's what you put on your paper. So, you know, we want to give them a chance to answer.
Rick Beggs You want to be elected. Isn't that what you're really doing?
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah, yeah, in a way. It's. The fact that they left that off is maybe not the best sign of how they're going to be and responding to constituents or, you know.
Rick Beggs Well, we could spend all day talking about how goofy that is. However. But when a candidate does get it.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah.
Rick Beggs What happens then? Because they. Isn't there a time window that they have to get this filled out and back to us at ivoterguide.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah, we have a pretty common, complex project for creating voter guides. So there's a window after we have to know who all the candidates are. We have a candidate filing deadline and that, and then we want to verify their email addresses. So then it's about a seven to ten days window that the candidates get emailed a link to answer their questionnaire. So it's all done in their own words. We're not, you know, transcribing what they've written on a piece of paper. It's. They type in all those answers. So if something's wrong, it's not on us. They did it themselves and they answered it.
Rick Beggs So when they get the questionnaire they start filling it in.
Rick Beggs And those answers are populated right away back to us.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah, we have a database that we're populating with all of the research. So every answer, as they click to the next question, it saves what they've entered, it logs what they've done. So we actually can go back and see if they change an answer, but we leave what, you know, what their final response was.
Rick Beggs Yeah, we can go back and we can.
Debbie Wuthnow It's interesting. We should have a. We're talking about.
Rick Beggs Yeah, well, I'm thinking if I. Let's say I'm a candidate and I'm There's 30 plus questions and I'm not going to do this in one setting. So let's say I get through question 5, 6, 7 and then I walk away. The answers all the way through seven are already recorded and have been. They're saved in our system.
Debbie Wuthnow Even the candidate can go back and look at them and adjust that if they want to.
Rick Beggs Yeah, but then we know if they pick up where they left it as well.
Debbie Wuthnow That is true.
Rick Beggs So do we have their first answer and their second answer?
Debbie Wuthnow We have it in our database, but what gets populated is their final answer.
Rick Beggs Okay, but you'll be able to see
Debbie Wuthnow they don't hear any music or anything. It says final answer. But that is they do get to review it and you know, kind of submit the questionnaire at the end.
Rick Beggs So I have 10 days to fill this out and I can go back and forth until those questions are answered and then I guess I submit. So what happens? I mean we got all this information now. and would you say there's a percentage of candidates that actually answer the
Debbie Wuthnow questionnaire and it's not all. Not unsurprisingly. And we track it and it's not
Rick Beggs bad if they didn't. It's just more helpful if it is. Because I even said in the last show that's my default for breaking a
Debbie Wuthnow tie is that question in primaries and things like that. It's, it's the differentiator. Right. For some voters of what can't.
Our average is probably 30 to 40% of candidates who answer the questionnaire
So we have We've had instances of as high as 70% of candidates who answer their questionnaire. We have incidences where nobody does or, you know, it's 10, 20. Our. Our average is probably 30 to 40% of candidates who answer the questionnaire. And honestly, I would say to you, the listeners, you could help drive that percentage up by candidates that you encounter and just saying, hey, I love to use ivoter guide. Please answer their questionnaire.
Rick Beggs Yeah. okay, so we get all that information back. Now what?
Debbie Wuthnow Well, that. At that point, I think our data collection phase is over and we move into candidate evaluation. I think at that point we also send it to the candidate to review all the data we've gathered. So they get a quality control check, I guess, of all the data. They get a preview to see. And this is all before any of it goes public. And then our panelists start to look at all of that and assign ratings. So that's, that's the process.
Rick Beggs And, once we've evaluated, we let them know what our finding is.
Debbie Wuthnow they. I'm trying to think. The process has changed over time. So they get to quality control the data. They see the, the evaluation when it goes public. So they are notified that we've released it. But, and that is when, if they don't like the rating, they would let us know that they're. They don't quality control what we've rated at. They get to quality control the data we use for the evaluation.
Rick Beggs Okay, so, now we have all this information. We've aggregated everything that we have that's public record. Now we have this questionnaire that hopefully 35% have answered. And so we have all our information now to make a good decision.
Debbie Wuthnow That's the, the goal.
Rick Beggs Okay. So once that is done, that's, that's the final. That's the thing that we produce and we send out.
Debbie Wuthnow it is, Yeah. I don't know what else you. Sometimes we'll have candidates who come back and let us later that I meant to answer that question wrong or I meant, you know, I think, oh, I didn't mean to say that. And so we do leave the answer how they've answered it, when they answered the questionnaire. And we might add a staff note, an addendum. Yeah, I call it an annotation. So it'll say. It'll say under that question, it'll say, my vocabulary is better. I didn't. I can't say it spell it. But, it'll say staff note. You know, candidate, contact us later. And let us know they meant to say, because we, we don't change the candidate's answers. It is their own word. So if that's what they did, if, if they didn't read carefully to see the way the question was phrased or something like that, Ah, the voters get to see that.
We have judicial surveys and school board surveys and education surveys
Rick Beggs So if I'm running for a, congressional district or a, senate seat or a, federal position, am I getting the same questionnaire that judges or school board or city council or what. What are we looking at here? Because they're different jobs, different purposes, different
Debbie Wuthnow responsibilities, different levels of authority, different issues. So, no, we start, when we update the questionnaire every cycle, every election cycle. And we start by updating the. What I would call the congressional questionnaire, which is the one that goes to senate and Congress. And that's kind of our baseline for what I would call our statewide and state legislator survey. and those are. They overlap greatly. They're, they're mostly aligned, but there's just some issues that are federal issues and different ones at state level. But then we also, as you said, have judicial. Sorry, we have judicial surveys and school board surveys and education surveys.
Rick Beggs And so what would be on the congressional one that might be different that we would find later for school board? I mean, I, I'm thinking it's a federal office. So we have some big questions from a federal perspective.
Debbie Wuthnow Probably national security type of questions, federal budgetary, budget types of questions. yeah, the, the health care, health care economy. I mean, there's different economy questions at the state level just because. Different income tax and things like that. And in fact, even we, we will. And have the ability to customize surveys by state. So, you know, we might have written it. There's times where we've had questions about, you know, should your state balance the budget or should they, you know, reduce income tax? Well, that state might not have income tax or they might have an, amendment requires a balanced budget. So we can take that questionnaire off. So we have, such incredible flexibility in types of questionnaires and customizing by office and customizing by state just so that we're asking the questions relevant to that specific race.
Rick Beggs So how would that differ than, let's say for a judicial one? Because you have, you know, state. States are real different on how they make decisions about Supreme Court or who's. How they are appointed. So what question would you get differently if you were a judicial candidate?
Debbie Wuthnow Well, and I will say judges. Initially we had them pretty similar. The questionnaires and judges would come back and say I can't answer a question on something I might rule upon. So they basically wouldn't answer any of
Rick Beggs your questions like taking the Fifth?
Debbie Wuthnow Pretty much. So, yeah. Because they don't want to predicate or prejudice, prejudice themselves as to how they might rule on something. So the judicial survey, we, we have a staff member who's a lawyer, so we kind of worked on, she asks them to give their opinions on cases and case law and rulings that have been out there. So you know, ask about Obergefell, ask about Roe v. Wade, ask about, you know, any of those procedural types of things. So more on the judicial philosophy than specifically on, you know, national security, health care types of issues.
Rick Beggs Yeah, they may care personally, but they don't care their job.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah, yeah.
Rick Beggs Well then that takes us down as we go to the lower levels or state levels where you have state, representatives or city councils or school board. Those will be more localized in regards to questions you're asking about. That makes it really difficult because every state has different things that they're dealing with. Some states that may be gambling. In that state they already got it. So we don't talk about that anymore.
Debbie Wuthnow And sometimes we even work with an organization in a state that's maybe a policy group that'll be a partner and as part of that partnership they get to customize maybe to trade out a couple questions for the issue they're really focusing on, in that state in that year. So. And then in the school board questionnaire, we're, you know, getting down into things that impact our kids and you know, safety officers in schools and library, books and things like that that parents want to know more about where the school board, that person stands.
Rick Beggs So I'm going to make a statement. You don't even know I'm going to say this. So we're going off script here. script. But I, yeah, we don't script. I don't know what you. What are you talking about? What's a script? the older I get, the more important to me are school board races.
Rick Beggs And city councils. Because that affects me now, affects my kids, that affects my grandkids.
Debbie Wuthnow It's the future.
Rick Beggs Yeah, it is the future. And so I'm always amazed that that there's, there hasn't seemed to been the effort put in to those types of things. I know we're trying to change that
Debbie Wuthnow is why Voter guy.
Rick Beggs but those are more important to the common. Well, and it's citizen.
Debbie Wuthnow It's almost like we didn't understand the importance of it. There's a friend who just walked by. Remember, we're on Radio Row.
Rick Beggs But, you don't have to wave at everybody. Oh, that's a little much.
Debbie Wuthnow Only my friends. And there's not very many. No. So, to me, it's almost like as I got older, you know, when I was a kid, I took history and I did fine in it, but I didn't appreciate it. But as I get older, I appreciate history, and it's the same thing. I don't understand. We didn't understand the importance of it and how important it was until we start to see its impact, on our kids and what that does to the rest of, American culture.
School board races are important because it affects the next generation of Americans
Rick Beggs Well, and while we're talking here, and I don't want to get too far ahead, but even yesterday, when you presented at the Conversation Conference, you talked about a real flash issue that when I looked at it, you had the big number 6% on the board up on the screen in your PowerPoint. And I thought, oh, my gosh, that's determining our school board races.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah. Are you trying to tease for a future topic?
Rick Beggs Well, I'm actually thinking that we ought to have a school board show or two.
Debbie Wuthnow Oh, I'm sure we'll come back to it a lot.
Rick Beggs But even the judges as well. I mean, I. I think those two things are separately different than all the other.
Debbie Wuthnow particular enough that we should dive a little deeper.
Rick Beggs Yeah. And we. We do have expertise on our own team here. We do at, AFA or AFA action that we could bring in.
Debbie Wuthnow And we will.
Rick Beggs Yeah. So anyway, but I. I just. That's sort of my bent right now about voting. I want to make sure people understand just how important school board races are, because that affects us now, whatever the president may decide. And yes, I want to make sure it's, a person that I want leading our country.
Debbie Wuthnow Even if you don't have kids in school.
Rick Beggs I know.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah. Because it's the next generation. It's peer groups, it's everything. Could be spouses for your kids.
Rick Beggs Well, and, you know, we're not teaching things like even we're talking about right now. I mean, we've said this probably at nauseam on this show. We don't teach civics anymore. We don't teach the things about even economics.
Debbie Wuthnow I don't think that we did. We assume it's like it is, but it is.
Rick Beggs It was required of us. And that's not the case anymore. So that's why school board races are important. there's a section in there, too, on the questionnaire that talks about them.
Debbie Wuthnow or you mean the about you section?
Rick Beggs The about you section. But it would be hard to say about you when I'm once talking to you, talking about them. So. But they have to answer questions about themselves. Walk me through some of that.
Debbie Wuthnow well, it's basically, you know, tell us about ourselves. What are your top three policy issues? I love the question. We find it very illuminating in rating candidates, we ask them to rate themselves. How would you describe yourself? From very conservative. You know, where do you land on the political spectrum? And, you know, we'll look at that when we're rating them. I mean, if they call themselves a moderate, maybe that's the right rating, you know. But if they say they're conservative, I will say that we do dive deeper. We're looking for the evidence and the proof and their positions on a bunch of issues, but we can kind of see a little into. Into the character of how they're portraying, you know, trying to portray themselves. So that's an important about you question. Background questions we do ask, you know, is there anything criminally that we should know about you? Right.
Rick Beggs Yeah. Shouldn't that be on the forum when you sign up to try to run for office?
Debbie Wuthnow You would think that would be something that's there. And I mean, gosh, what happened to Graham Platner? I mean, there's. There's still stuff that happens that you don't know about. So it's just asking, is there anything that the voters need to know about you? Have you been convicted of something, especially a sexual crime, that voters need to know about?
Rick Beggs Sort of like the last question somebody asked you in a job interview. Is there anything we didn't ask you that we should have asked you?
Debbie Wuthnow No, not at all.
Rick Beggs Please don't make me go deeper. I, know that, the questionnaire has less value when we rate the candidates, but my goodness, it is so helpful.
Debbie Wuthnow Oh, super, super, super. Yeah.
Rick Beggs Yeah. And it doesn't surprise me that people who use I voterguide, that's where they go to, maybe even first. I, try not to go there first. I really try to go there last.
Debbie Wuthnow It's kind of like, you know, when you go at the grocery store and you go to buy milk, is that ever in the front of the store? No, it's way in the back. Right. They want you to walk by everything else so that the items that people want most.
Rick Beggs I'm that guy. I'm that guy that they're grabbing. Because I'm looking at 12 other things,
Debbie Wuthnow and I only went in for Milky send you for, like, two things. You come with 10.
Rick Beggs is this an announcement, doing this on the air? Yes, that's me. And you know what? That's how they play grocery stores. I'm that guy.
Debbie Wuthnow Well, we kind of do the same thing.
We start updating the questionnaire way before where you. So every cycle. Before you're thinking about the next election cycle
So we've got the questionnaire down at the bottom of the page, so you have to at least see everything else that's there to get to. Oh, there is this button, but don't click it. If you click on the blue buttons at the top, it'll navigate you down. But that's kind of. Our concept is to show you visually, the importance of the data points by putting the scorecards and then the campaign finance and the endorsements and the other information. And then down at the bottom is
Rick Beggs the question, I would think, over time. And let's just take presidential races. You know, every four years, we're voting again, and the current events, the political situation isn't what it was really. Yes, I'm, Captain obvious. But because of that, the questions probably have to change.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah.
Rick Beggs Every cycle.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah. So every cycle. And actually, we. We start updating the questionnaire way before where you. Before you're thinking about the next election cycle is when we have. We will start. So we'll have an election in November and by next summer. We're working on the questionnaire to update it for the 2028 cycle. It takes us, there was a year that we would have all these. Each meeting was two hours in length, and I swear to you, we had a total of at least 10, if not 20 of these meetings with our team. So we start by, what are all the issues that are out there? Are there things. We're not even covering that topic. are there questions that, gosh, this kind of dropped off the radar. I mean, think about before COVID happened, who would have asked a question about vaccine mandates or masks? Right. So it's kind of like making sure we add that. and, you know, then again, on the other side, President Trump gets elected and just locks down the southern border. We used to have a question that said, should the southern border be secured when we had Biden in office? So we're like, well, we don't really need that one anymore. We can. We can pivot that to, you know, maybe an immigration question or something else along those same type of lines. So we try to cover as many issues as are important to voters. We Try to cover, different. The way phrase. The way we phrase the questions. We try to have it so that strongly agree is not the conservative answer in every case. We want the candidates to really pay attention and answer the questions thoughtfully. and then we add questions that we haven't covered. So ivf. We added a question about, you know, how do you treat the embryos? Comstock Act.
Rick Beggs Yeah. I mean, my mind's wandering because you go back to. We didn't used to have critical race theory.
Debbie Wuthnow Right.
Rick Beggs So that wouldn't be a question to ask. And now it's populated in our school system.
Debbie Wuthnow Well. And even financially, ESG investing was a very big topic, and then that kind of just got resolved and so we dropped that one off. So we do try to pay attention. But you have to remember we're finalizing that questionnaire. We have to finalize it probably around Thanksgiving of the year, before the big election year, because the primaries start so early that we're sending out questionnaires by November, December, for the primaries that happen early in 2028. I can't even imagine. We're not even to 2026 yet. But, yeah, that's what's on the horizon.
Rick Beggs Well, and I remember when the electoral college was a big thing that we talked about during the presidential elections. Or it's still a police.
Debbie Wuthnow some people talk about that. Yes.
Rick Beggs But I mean, you can see how it's sort of a tide that rolls. Yeah. Defunding the police. So, okay, so we have all the questions. They've answered all that stuff. We have the right questions that we put out there. And now we have a accumulation of information that allows people to read through every detail that we have. Have put together so that as many things as that we could turn over every stone that we could turn over. Somebody would have a question, say, well, how about this? Well, it's. If it's not in the questionnaire, it's probably been gathered somewhere in aggregating all this public information.
Debbie Wuthnow That section has a really descriptive title, other information.
Rick Beggs It's sort of like your junk drawer at your kitchen.
Debbie Wuthnow Yeah, it's like that didn't get caught anywhere else. So that's where we'll place, you know, interview links, questionnaires. They've answered somewhere else. So we try to give a place to put all political intelligence we can find on. On the candidates so that we can gather that together, both for our panelists as they rate, but also to voters so that they can decide, especially in the primaries where it's hard to decide Between.
Get your name on ivoterguide's list, not only because
Rick Beggs Well, as we come to the close of this, particular show about the questionnaire, I want to say to people, get your name on ivoterguide's list, not only because you can find out about your candidates, but even more importantly, what it does for you to be on the mailing system so you can read about the different things that we're willing to talk about that I don't think a lot of places are willing to talk about.
Debbie Wuthnow No, we're pretty unique in that.
Rick Beggs Yeah. And so, we're just grateful, that people would even come listen to us. Debbie, you and me.
Debbie Wuthnow Come on. It's fun.
Rick Beggs It is. We're trying to enjoy it. Anyway, what is that sound that we hear? Debbie?
Tuesday, August 11, there will be six primary elections across the country
Debbie Wuthnow Tuesday, August 8th. We're back in election season. So next Tuesday there are Hawaii, you have an election, but you don't have any contested candidates in the Republican primary. So you might have contested candidates further down the ballot that I Voter guide is not covering. so if you do check it out and go vote on Tuesday, August 11, there will be six primary elections. We are certainly back in the throw of it. South Carolina, you have a special election for the U.S. senate seat, that was vacated sadly by Lindsey Graham. Wisconsin, you have an election on that Tuesday. Your polls are open from 7:00am to 8:00pm Vermont, your election is finally here. Polls open at 5:00am M. And they close it. Glad I'm not an election worker in Vermont. And closing at 7:00pm Minnesota, you have, an election as well. Polls open at 7am close at 8pm Connecticut, polls are open from 6am to 8pm And Alabama, you have a special election for four different congressional districts and your polls open at 7am Close at 7pm but we also have early voting going on in multiple states. Alaska, your early voting is underway. Your election will be on the 17th. Wyoming, early voting is underway. Your primaries on the 18th. Pennsylvania, you have a special general election for House District 12. Ballots must be received by 8pm on the 18th. And then Florida, finally, you're getting in the mix. Early voting begins today for your primary election on August the 15th. That does include some school board coverage, so check that out@ivoter guide.com and in Arkansas, early voting is, begins on is the 11th through. Wait, the 11th through the 17th for a special election. And your polls open at 8:30 in the morning. That's it for the.
Rick Beggs I cannot believe you have that all memorized.
Debbie Wuthnow I'm amazing. I am amazing.
Rick Beggs Well, you have been listening to the official radio show of iVoterGuide. It's called the Compass. And you can reach [email protected] or Debbie, how can they reach us off the compass?
Debbie Wuthnow They can email us at, compassivoterguide, dot com. Send any questions you have. We will answer them on the air or my team will get right back to you.
Rick Beggs Well, thank you to Brent Austin, who is our producer. And remember, on the Compass, our true north will always be Jesus. Thank you for tuning in. It.
Chapters:
(00:00) Rick Beggs and Debbie Wuthnow welcome you to the Compass
(00:56) We have a question questionnaire on iVoterGuide that voters answer
(01:56) How do you find 13, 15,000 candidates their email addresses
(06:52) Our average is probably 30 to 40% of candidates who answer the questionnaire
(09:27) We have judicial surveys and school board surveys and education surveys
(15:05) School board races are important because it affects the next generation of Americans
(19:38) We start updating the questionnaire way before where you. So every cycle. Before you're thinking about the next election cycle
(24:23) Get your name on ivoterguide's list
(25:06) Tuesday, August 11, there will be six primary elections across the country
✍️ Episode References
iVoterGuide
https://ivoterguide.com/
Debbie Wuthnow
https://ivoterguide.com/about
Rick Beggs
https://ivoterguide.com/about
Conversation Conference
https://conversationconference.com/
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