Crowdsource Texas school board election info

[werdnanoslen]

What problem are we trying to solve?

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. RunForOffice.org is gathering and publishing information on all publicly elected offices so that people can easily find what they can run for and how to get on the ballot.

Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from this project?

Texas has over 1000 school boards, and RunForOffice is looking for some help in collecting the information. Volunteer commitments are usually distributed in less than one hour chunks.

Links to any research/data available/articles

If you'd be up for it, here's an example of a typical assignment, which is really just seeking stuff out online and getting into the Google Form from the hyperlink.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uvoiSxuzQg1zGQ084zrp4IT_rG9WpN24hltdM2ZMihI/edit#gid=0

And here's the guide for getting the work done: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mlqTlePy30sueGM-LFgThfmDYrfbIbTzrzLDExhd9wU/edit

To get more info directly, sign up here: http://getinvolved.runforoffice.org/volunteer/?recruiter_id=1165848

We are working on a better interface, but for now this works.

What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?

Research how to run for Texas school board offices, per district

What help is needed at this time?

Gathering data on how to run, what positions are open, what each school board requires. Could also look into researching, designing, and developing a way to use this data.

[mateoclarke]

nice, this looks very beginner friendly!

[werdnanoslen]

For reference, this is derived from a project started years ago by Jim Cupples (@ballotpath): https://github.com/ballotpath/BallotPath

[amaliebarras]

Hey Andy! Are you looking to lead this project? Or throwing it out there for someone to pick up?

[werdnanoslen]

I can lead the local efforts, but most of the management will happen from the national organizers at RunforOffice.org

[werdnanoslen]

Update from Jim Cupples (Cofounder and Director of RunForOffice.org)

The main intention of creating the site was to allow people to easily understand what they can run for and how to get on the ballot.

We've crowdsourced over 50,000 positions on the site, and I am determined to get every school board position on the site this summer.

Which is why I'm emailing you. Can you do a one hour volunteer assignment to help crowdsource the database? If so, just follow this link to sign up.

If you're thinking of being a candidate, there's a great reason to help build the database, and that is so you can help others run. This is going to sound like a strange and repetitive sentence, but it's true: Candidates that help other candidates are better candidates themselves.

I wrote a piece called "The Bottom Carries The Top" that focuses on why top of the ballot candidates should be helping to recruit other candidates, and also helping them run. Please, check it out if you are considering running for office.

It's Sunday, so I don't want to take up any more of your time. If you have an hour today or this week, please sign up to volunteer and we'll send you your first volunteer assignment.

I've also attached a pdf of all the filing windows that are occurring this summer.

I hope you can use the pdf to politically organize, and I also hope you will help us make that dataset even better by volunteering with the project.

Best,

Jim

PS - Feel free to contact me about any questions regarding the site, volunteering, or running for office in general. I'll do my best to get back to you, and if there's a delay, just email me again. Sometimes I'm buried in work, but I value every single person that helps Run For Office help more people find out how they can become candidates.

[werdnanoslen]

There might be some overlap here with #93