CASE STUDY

A Blueprint for Voter Guides: How Atlanta Civic Circle Modernized Election Coverage

IMPACT AT A GLANCE

The challenge

The Atlanta Civic Circle (ACC) is a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to getting voters civically engaged through clear, accessible journalism. Each election, voters turn to the ACC to get informed about their local races.

In 2024, the ACC’s goal was to develop a streamlined, user-friendly voter guide that would serve as the go-to resource for local election information. But they faced a big challenge: there were over 1,000 candidates seeking office in the Atlanta area alone.

Saba Long, the Executive Director of the ACC, explains, “Creating a voter guide the old school way by inputting the information manually for each candidate is just too time-intensive. It might be okay for a very small local election, but it doesn’t work at scale.”

How could the ACC inform readers about the candidates, without overwhelming them with information? And How would the ACC’s small team of 10 handle all of the work associated with creating a voter guide?

The solution

To solve these challenges, the Atlanta Civic Circle partnered with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), Georgia’s largest local newsroom, to co-produce a voter guide. The two newsrooms coordinated research efforts and shared resources. Both newsrooms used VoterGuideOS, a new voter guide management platform, to coordinate their work, automate their candidate research and produce an easy, personalized reader experience.

Using VoterGuideOS, the ACC covered over 1,000 candidates seeking office, both for Atlanta’s primary and general elections. Their voter guide received remarkable engagement of 8,000 unique visitors, and helped the newsroom grow its long-term audience by over 2,000 people.

You can see the ACC’s interactive ballot guide here, powered by VoterGuideOS (use sample address 730 Peachtree St NE).

The ACC followed a step-by-step process. This case study outlines that blueprint, which any newsroom can follow to create an engaging voter guide without overwhelming their newsroom. (This case study focuses on the ACC’s journey and results as a nonprofit newsroom. A separate study focusing on the AJC’s story is coming soon.)

Building a voter guide, step-by-step

Step 1: Identifying the Scope

Before building a voter guide, newsrooms must first define its scope. Teams should consider these key questions:

  1. What geographic area will the guide serve? (Citywide, county, or statewide?)

  2. What will the guide help voters navigate? (The voting process, candidate choices, or both?)

  3. What types of elections should be covered? (Presidential, statewide, local races, ballot measures? Primary elections or general elections?)

Expanding coverage is a great way to meet reader needs, but typically means more research, outreach, and technical work to keep the guide both useful and easy to navigate.

For their 2024 voter guide, the ACC chose to cover every Atlanta-area race (both statewide and local) for the primary and general elections.

With over 1,000 candidates running for office in the Atlanta area alone, creating a guide this size would typically be beyond the reach of a small newsroom. 

To solve this, the ACC team leveraged the VoterGuideOS Candidate List feature. Within minutes, they were able to populate their guide with candidate names, photos, and social media links for every contest in Atlanta.

ACC imports VoterGuideOS’s pre-configured Candidate List data.

Step 2: Choosing a Coverage Strategy

Voter guides can take many forms, and newsrooms must decide how to best cover candidates. Here are some common options:

  • Questionnaire-based coverage

  • Editorial blurbs

  • Debates

  • Interviews

  • Hyperlinking to news stories

Each approach has its pros and cons, along with varying resource requirements. For example, questionnaires scale well but don’t allow for follow-up questions that press candidates on harder issues. Editorial blurbs allow for more investigative journalism but are harder to scale.

For their 2024 voter guide ACC chose to use questionnaire-based coverage, allowing them to produce primary source content at scale.

Step 3: Building the Questionnaire

The ACC chose to send questionnaires directly to candidates. Their main priority was holding candidates accountable on issues that their readers cared about most. Rather than make assumptions about those issues, the ACC team conducted a month of audience listening through their “Atlanta POV” tool. 

“We were surprised at some of the issues our readers were frequently asking about, such as foreign policy issues,” explained Saba Long.

The ACC crafted candidate questions based on these issues. They matched each question to the office with the most authority over the issue — focusing on questions about housing and election for local candidates and foreign policy and climate change for federal candidates. To encourage candidate responses, the ACC kept the questionnaire concise, selecting only a few questions for each candidate. 

They worked with VoterGuideOS to create a dynamic form that funneled candidate responses directly into a database for easy review and publishing.

ACC improved its response rate through proactive follow-ups, clear communication about the guide’s reach, and leveraging media networks to pressure candidates.

Step 4: Reviewing Candidate Responses

Once a candidate responds to a questionnaire, newsrooms must decide how to review the information. Should responses be published exactly as submitted, lightly edited for clarity, or fact-checked for accuracy?

ACC partnered with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) to review each submission, ensuring responses were proofread for typos, checked for obvious errors, and kept readable. They chose to publish responses with minimal editing, preserving candidates’ original wording.

Once approved, the responses were then automatically published via the VoterGuideOS platform.

Step 5: Finding the Right Publishing Solution

The average voter in Atlanta saw about 100 candidates on their ballot during the 2024 elections. The ACC needed a publishing solution that:

  1. Did not overwhelm readers with information.

  2. Was easy for their news team to set up.

In previous years, the ACC used templated guides on Newspack. These proved too cumbersome for Atlanta’s extensive ballot – overwhelming readers with long pages of static content that discouraged engagement.

In 2024, they opted to use VoterGuideOS. Saba Long said, “The main driver for using VoterGuideOS was reader feedback. Readers wanted something that gets them the most amount of information in an easy-to-access and understand format.”

Transitioning to VoterGuideOS was smooth. The ACC provided an easy-to-navigate interface, where readers could personalize content to their unique address. It had the added benefit of significantly reducing ACC’s workload, getting rid of hours spent dragging and dropping candidate blocks into articles.

Overall, reader engagement with the voter guide was much higher in 2024. Audience members had this to say:

“I love the layout and all the information provided so we can better make informed decisions on who we’re gonna vote for. Thank you!!” – ACC Reader

“Makes voting less daunting and random. Now, I can make an informed vote whereas before that wasn't the case. I know who's running for office, where to find more information, what referendums are being proposed, and what they mean. Thank you!” – ACC Reader

You can view the voter guide yourself by clicking the button above (use sample address 730 Peachtree St NE).

Step 6: Promoting the Guide

Once the guide was live, the ACC executed on a promotional strategy to promote their guide. Saba Long explained, "You can't just put a plugin on the site and assume that you've done your job... We were really intentional about how we communicated about the voter guide."

Here are the strategies the ACC used:

  1. Every election-related story linked to the voter guide, with a clear call to action: "Want to learn more about this candidate and others? Click here."

  2. The guide was prominently featured in the ACC newsletters, ensuring consistent visibility.

  3. The ACC collaborated with media influencers and local organizations, such as the Urban League and cycling advocacy groups.

Final results

The 2024 voter guide quickly became ACC's most successful to date, garnering widespread praise from both voters and community leaders. A funder called it a "fantastic voter guide," saying more investment was needed in this sort of civic engagement.

The impact of the guide was far reaching. In total, the ACC:

  • Provided a fundamental resource for often overlooked elections, covering over 1,000 Atlanta area candidates.

  • Boosted credibility with funders and civic leaders by amassing over 8,000 unique visitors.

  • Strengthened community partnerships with local organizations by working collaboratively.

  • Laid the groundwork for sustained civic engagement and future election cycles by collecting 2,000 emails from readers.

ACC’s success solidified its role as a trusted resource, positioning the newsroom for ongoing community involvement and long-term funding.

Financial sustainability for future years

As newsrooms continue to grapple with sustainability, the ACC saw an opportunity to raise additional funds from the audience that used their voter guide. The ACC:

  • Collected over 2,000 emails from the voter guide, leveraging reader engagement to build its donor base. 

  • Integrated fundraising appeals within newsletters and voter communications, converting reader appreciation into financial support.

The results of this fundraising work are still in progress.

For other newsrooms: voter guides can serve as both a public service and a tool for audience growth and donor engagement.