Our History
Ballotpedia is the Encyclopedia of American Politics. With a quarter of a million articles, over 780 million page views, and a tireless and dedicated staff of 60, Ballotpedia has come a long way in its 10 years of existence.
How did we get here? It’s a great story.
In the winter of 2006, in the tundra of Madison, Wisconsin, Leslie Graves was frustrated. This politically active Wisconsin resident wanted more information on local government activity, but local officials consistently ignored her FOIA requests.
Was everyone having trouble finding information on their local governments?
She shared her concerns with friends and family, who suggested that Leslie create a resource devoted to helping citizens navigate the laws surrounding government transparency. A game plan was hatched, papers were filed, and on December 18, 2006, the Lucy Burns Institute was incorporated as a nonprofit organization.
In early 2007, the Institute officially took its first step toward its mission of connecting people to politics and launched WikiFOIA, a collaborative, crowd-sourced website geared toward increasing understanding of state-level FOIA laws. The goal of WikiFOIA was to harness local knowledge in an effort to empower citizens seeking information from governmental entities. It was a hit.
Inspired by WikiFOIA’s success, Leslie started thinking about the lack of information around other areas of government. Would this approach work to shine a light on the other dark corners that politically active citizens came across? With only one way to find out, the Lucy Burns Institute started two more online platforms. These were dedicated to sharing information about statewide and local ballot measures and the laws governing them; state and local recall elections and the laws governing them; federal and state court judges, their appointments and elections, and the intricate laws governing judicial selection; and state court judicial administration. These websites were named Ballotpedia and Judgepedia.
Throughout the next seven years, Ballotpedia expanded to include information on state legislators and state legislative elections; statewide executive officials and their elections, appointments, history and scope of power; U.S. congressional candidates and elections; initiative and referendum at the municipal level; and school board candidates and elections. These two websites were attracting thousands of visitors a day and contained enough information to fill over 200 bibles.
Both websites had the same mission: to educate people about politics. On March 2015, the decision was made to merge the information from Judgepedia onto Ballotpedia and continue on, not as the Lucy Burns Institute, but as Ballotpedia.
Ballotpedia’s database continued to grow. New areas of coverage were added, including 2016 presidential election coverage and a historical record of every measure on a state ballot since 1900. People kept reading our pages. Half a billion page views inspired us to keep on keeping on.
Where are we going? We intend to keep building! Did you know there are over 507,000 elected officials in the United States? We seek to inform Americans about the officials, candidates, offices, laws that govern every kind of election, and public policy issues that impact all of us.
That sounds like a lofty goal, but we believe in a few principles that make Ballotpedia worth our blood, sweat, and tears.
First, we know that the truth is not partisan. We seek to provide unbiased, fact-checked information that anyone in any aisle would say is accurate. We also know that people seek truth and use it in positive, powerful, and unforeseen ways. Our readers use our information to hold officials accountable, to find ways to get involved in their local government, to inform their own friends and family, to write informative books and articles, and—perhaps most importantly—to make decisions that are right for them on election day. Informed voters are the foundation of democracy. Positive change starts with them.
See also
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