League of Women Voters Launches Election Information Website

The last day to vote early in midterm elections in Orange County is tomorrow with general election day being next Tuesday.

Voters looking for non-partisan information about elections and their candidates for office can check out the League of Women Voters’ website vote411.org.

Co-president of the League of Women Voters, Janet Hoy said the website is a one stop shop for all of your voting and election needs.

“One of the most important things, we think, is you can get information on candidates,” Hoy said. “In this state, there doesn’t seem to be many sources of getting non-partisan information on candidates and vote411.org is that place, online, totally available and you see there’s about six or seven questions that we’ve asked each of the candidates in every race across the state.

“So, we’re doing our best to cover everyone of the races in each one of the 100 counties, its about 2,000 candidates and over 1,000 races so its kind of a big job. But instead of us editing or making changes to any of the answers to the questions the candidates make, they are written down or they can put it in a youtube file if they want to and you hear it directly from the candidate, so we don’t do any editing; we don’t even check grammar or spelling.”

Hoy said voters can take their cell phones into the voting booth with them and pull up the website to look up candidates as they vote.

The site also has a polling place locator.

“There’s a whole bunch of information on there,” Hoy said. “If you put in your street address, including your zip code, then you can get information on where your early voting sites are; you can get a customized ballot that would have the races that impact you; you can get information on if you want to wait until Tuesday to vote you can find out where your polling place is, which is pretty important because you cant just go anywhere on Election Day, and you have to go to the particular place tied to your address.”

Hoy said the importance of voting in midterm elections is amplified due to lower turnout.

“There’s some local races on our ballot here in Orange County that are very important,” Hoy said. “If you care about what happens in our county, you might want to vote for that county commissioner. And if you care about public safety, you might want to vote for that sherriff.”

According to Hoy, the League of Women Voters, which has been an organization for almost 100 years and was established following the nineteenth amendment, is happy to see the uptick of women running for office.

“If you’re comparing the primary from 2014 to 2018, for state house seats, so its both house and senate, in 2014 there were 24 women running, in 2018 this year, there are 119.”

Voters can register and vote at one-stop early voting locations Friday and Saturday. Election Day is Tuesday, May 8.