Leslie Graves is the founder and CEO of Ballotpedia, the most reliable source of country impartial information on politics, elections and politicians.
Since the creation of Ballotpedia in 2007 at his kitchen table in Spring Green, Wisconsin, Graves has transformed it from a small volunteer effort into an essential democratic institution that serves voters, researchers, activists, students and journalists.
- “Ballotpedia’s sustainability is an aberrant value in the cemetery of non -partisan electoral sites.” – John Gastil and Andrea Felentti, The Information Company(1)
Assignment
What started as a personal quest for reliable information and without rotation on voting initiatives has become the life mission of Graves. Struck by the partisan nature of the available electoral information and the general lack of accessible resources, it has established ballots with an unshakable commitment to neutrality and factual precision. Under its leadership, the organization has developed rigorous systems to guarantee objectivity – employees “leave their home policy” and complete audits and metrics guide the development of content. This cultural dedication to neutrality has made Ballotpedia the definitive encyclopedia of American policy, with the content of professionals on which millions rely to make informed decisions.
518,000 elected officials, a source of confidence
Graves currently conducts the most ambitious initiative of Ballotpedia to date: ensuring that each voter in the United States can easily find the list of candidates for all their elections, as well as significant information on all these candidates. Federal elected officials represent 0.01% of all American elected officials. State officials represent 3.7%, while 96% of all elected officials in the United States are local. Politicians who dominate the news barely scratches the surface of the number of politicians in the United States.
Ballotpedia’s initiative responds to a fundamental democratic deficit: millions of eligible voters remain at home at each electoral cycle – no apathy, but because they do not have the tools and information to participate with confidence, in particular in local and bottom of Ballots. Through innovative approaches such as Voting bulletin sample tool (used by 7 million Americans in 2024) and the Candidate connection Investigation, Graves’s Ballotpedia systematically dismantles the obstacles to democratic participation.
Impact and vision
The parameters of the influence of voting bulletins are narcotic – 1.4 billion pages for life and 4 million subscribers to the newsletter – but serious measures success through individual stories of the empowerment of voters, like the mother of Atlanta who sent an email to ballots.
Through his monthly chronicle, “The pathfinder“Part of the initiative of PBS / WNET Preserver democracy, Graves continues to guide readers in a civic discovery trip, exploring both machinery and the sense of American democracy.
His vision is clear: a future where voters are “committed, enthusiastic and equipped to make the difference”. It is not only a question of providing information – it is a question of promoting and preserving democracy.
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