—The St. Cloud Times

With less than 30 days until ballots are cast, voters weary of politically spun advertising should turn to Project Vote Smart for some easy-to-find factual information about candidates, especially those running for state and federal offices.

Founded in 1992, Project Vote Smart has become a well-known, highly respected research organization. It’s a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that digs deep to provide information on candidates.

Name, age, education, experience, positions on issues, votes on key legislation plus who fills war chests — Project Vote Smart aims to provide all of it in an easily digestible format.

For this election cycle, Project Vote Smart is offering several new tools to help voters make informed choices. All of them can be found at http://votesmart.org. But even if you don’t have computer access, you can call the research hotline at 888-868-3762 for help in answering your candidate-specific questions.

The tool most useful to voters is “I Spy,” which shows up on the website as a search bar. Type in a candidate’s name and you can get details in these categories: bio, votes, positions, ratings, speeches and funding. Click the category for details that Project Vote Smart researchers have unearthed and presented for easy reading.

Please note while the positions tab may seem like a great resource, its contents depend on candidates taking the project’s “Political Courage Test.” If candidates have not filled out that test, information here will be limited.

However, the other categories still can provide valuable information about candidates. For example, the funding category typically names the biggest donors sector, by special interest, etc. It even lists amounts donated. Information is pulled mostly from 2012 war chests courtesy of www.followthemoney.org, which is another great resource for voters to examine.

The “I Spy” tool is just one of several that voters might find useful. Researchers also have created a tool to find your “Political Soul Mate” and one designed to identify any candidate’s stance on any issue. Please note success in using these tools varies by candidate, region and jurisdiction.

For example, there is little or no information on candidates in city, school board and county races. However, there are plenty of details for state and federal races.

With less than a month until voters visit polling sites, checking with Project Vote Smart is a great way to increase what you know about those candidates.

Distributed by MCT Information Services