Smart Voter, a project of the League of Women Voters of California Education Fund, partners with County Elections Officials to give people the best possible clear and unbiased election information they need to be well-informed voters. Smart Voter automates the ballot and polling place lookups using data supplied by the county.

Here are some questions County Elections Officials might ask about Smart Voter and the League of Women Voters:

• Does your organization advocate on issues?
• What guidelines do you set for information published on your site?
• What is the benefit to our county elections department?
• What kind of outreach to communities do you do?
• Do you publish material in languages other than English?

Does your organization advocate on issues?

The League of Women Voters of California Education Fund is a 501(c)(3) organization which means that we can not engage in advocacy or we will lose that tax-exempt status. We have available a copy of the IRS letter from a recent audit confirming that our tax-exempt status is still intact. Contact our project director at director@smartvoter.org for a copy.

What guidelines do you set for information published on your site?

We make sure that the information we offer to the public, in whatever form, is sound and unbiased with no hint of advocacy. We run our Smart Voter Election Service according to the same California law by which you must abide. We put up all the appropriate warnings and disclaimers on the site and on the instruction pages where the candidates enter their information. If a candidate violates the regulations we take immediate action. We also put those instructions in the invitation letters that we send out to all of the candidates.

What is the benefit to our county elections department?

Smart Voter computers are housed by a service which offers us extra capacity during election time when we need it. Smart Voter serves not only the public but the County Registration and Elections Department as well. Smart Voter is there for a backup system in case your system should go down or get overloaded during an election. This has happened in two counties recently. In another county we were there to provide the ballot lookup when their service provider could no longer do so.

We take the extra Web site hits and eliminate the need for thousands of inquiries to your office during the most frantic hours of the election. That allows you to save money on extra staff while enhancing your service to the public.

What kind of outreach to communities do you do?

We also magnify your mandated outreach to the community with the grassroots efforts of our Local Leagues in the county and the media campaign we do for the Smart Voter website at election time.

We ran a pilot outreach project in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, which is serving as a model that we hope to roll out across the state. We are specifically targeting the underserved communities, ethnic minorities and young people. Our project director meets with community-based organizations in those areas and makes presentations at schools and community centers that serve young people. We are creating a training module that will be easy for local Leagues to implement.

Do you publish material in languages other than English?

We have the Easy Voter Guide hot-linked from Smart Voter for those whose first language is not English. It is written at a 6^th grade level in very clear language. We offered it in November 2004 in Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, and English.

Also, candidates have as much space as they want on Smart Voter and can put up their information in more than one language if they choose -- and some do.