Transcript

Rick: Debbie from ivoterguide. com joins the show to discuss voter guides

>> Rick Beggs: Welcome to the Compass navigating the public square together with faith, truth and conviction. Well, we're back again with the compass and as always, Debbie, Wuthnow, the president of ivoterguide is actually sitting across from me today. So Debbie, hey.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Hey, Rick. It's great to be in the same room with you.

>> Rick Beggs: It's good to be able to see you when we're talking. I was thinking I'm going to let you decide what direction on the compass we're going today. What are you thinking?

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Well, as I think back, I can't believe we're already at the fourth show. The other shows we kind of talked about, why are we here? How did I voter guide get created? What do we look at? but you know, the reason we gather all the data is to evaluate candidates. So I thought maybe it's time to introduce the gauge.

>> Rick Beggs: The gauge. So you're asking me to tell the folks if they would engage in the

>> Debbie Wuthnow: gauge with the gauge? Yeah, I think it's time. I think it's time.

>> Rick Beggs: So let me suggest something.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Okay.

>> Rick Beggs: If, if our listeners, are close to their computer or have their phone, probably are and we know they have their phones, so if they were to go to ivoterguide.com and put in their address, they could pull up maybe their ballot, you walk them through it. Well, what, what should they do so we can maybe do this together?

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Well, and you know, we could talk about it, but I am from Missouri and that is the show me state. So it feels like let's, let's, let's show you what it is and how it applies to you. So if you have your phone or your computer, go to I voterguide.com. you should see a, you know, an image. It'll, as it loads, it'll have a, ah, porch with a flag. It'll have a dad with his son in the ballot box. And you'll see a little white box there that says enter your voting address.

>> Rick Beggs: All right, so I've done that.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Click on that little white box.

>> Rick Beggs: I'm doing it with them.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: You got it. Okay, so click on the white box and type in your address and then click. Actually it should, populate your address. As you type, it'll start to show you, what your address is and then go down and just click on the one that is your personal address. Then see, my voter guide and it should pull up whatever election is upcoming for you. Now, we haven't released all the primary election voter guides. We're still working pretty Hard on quite a few of them. There are some out, so if you don't have one available, or maybe, we've just released what we call the candidate list. So you just see photos of candidates and maybe a link to their website, but you don't see this gas gauge. You're like, what are you talking about? I would suggest you go back to the homepage and there's another way to get to some voter guides. So if you scroll down, instead of entering your personal address, you should see a map of the United States.

>> Rick Beggs: Would California be a good one for them to look at? Because that is upcoming.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: It is upcoming and by the time this airs, that will be out. So yeah, click on California and then you should get a pop up box that will show you upcoming elections and click on the link for that election and it should pull up that personalized ballot for all of California, which is a ton of candidates.

>> Rick Beggs: Yeah, so I'm, I'm in mine for my particular state and I know ours is upcoming soon as well. Now when we look at this page and we see all of these candidates, each one of them has a gauge that somebody out there on our team has, accumulated enough information that we can make a, really sound judgment.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: An evaluation. Yeah.

>> Rick Beggs: Okay. And so what am I looking at this for most? Like for mine, this is just Republicans. But in California, which is a jungle primary, why don't you describe even the differences of that?

>> Debbie Wuthnow: well, so you know, we are a Christian ministry, which means, obviously we have a biblical worldview, we share conservative values. we also don't have unlimited funds available. So to be the best steward of those resources, which. Thank you. For those of you who have supported what AFA or I Voter Guide does, that's why this is available. so we only cover the Republican Party primary. most voter guides that are out there don't even do anything with the primary, but we do cover the Republican primary. And then in states like California, which they don't have a Republican primary, they

>> Rick Beggs: throw everybody in the soup.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: They call, literally some people call it a jungle primary because it's basically a primary where everybody runs every party. Sometimes they'll call it a top two primary. Alaska actually has a top four primary. So everybody runs in the jungle. And then whoever gets the, the, the two or four people who get the most votes advance to the general. So you might, in California frequently gets two Democrats in the general election. So we'll, we're in California. We will evaluate all the candidates because it's a jungle primary.

>> Rick Beggs: Yeah. So in particular for the most part, if you're looking at a state that you live in and it's a red state, a Republican state, predominantly with Republicans on the ticket, we will see for the most part, moderate to verified conservative. We may see some that slide into, into the blue.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Yes. In fact I think we kind of did a look see and I think we had many as 5 to 10% of candidates in the Republican primary in the states, you know, just the first few states and that rated in the liberal range.

>> Rick Beggs: Oh my. Okay.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: And yeah it's we, that could be a whole conversation. But we find in red states sometimes somebody who runs who maybe doesn't really share the Republican values, but it, the, everything is such a Republican district that unless you have an, they'll say an R behind your name, you have no chance of winning. So even though they don't you know, align with the platform of the Republicans, they will still run as a Republican.

>> Rick Beggs: Yeah, yeah, I think there's, there's some of that deception stuff going on out there, isn't it?

Willie: Well, we're looking at a broad spectrum of issues

>> Debbie Wuthnow: A little bit.

>> Rick Beggs: Well, okay, so why don't we walk through the gauge itself because let's just say I'm looking at a Republican primary.

>> Rick Beggs: Predominantly they would be from moderate down to verified conservative.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Correct.

>> Rick Beggs: So why don't we start at that top point, 12 noon at moderate on the gauge and then go to the right.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: So since it really looks to me like a gas gauge, the moderate would basically your tank is half full. So when we're looking at candidates, we

>> Rick Beggs: are looking, she said tongue in cheek,

>> Debbie Wuthnow: wait till we get to empty. But so when it's when for a moderate rating, what we're looking at is, you know, we're looking at a broad spectrum of issues. We're looking at lots and lots of data points. The more data the better. And as we look at all that data, we're looking for positions, on particular issues on life, on religious liberty, on climate change, on national security. And if we, and we kind of identify things as a more conservative position versus a more liberal position, so if we find a candidate that's got, you know, a spot, a mix of data, we'll call it mixed data, both liberal positions and conservative positions. Sometimes they are liberal conservatively. So like on the social issues of life and parental rights and religious liberty. But maybe they like to spend money. So they're very, you know, that's what would land you in the moderate range is when you have a pretty equal Balance of liberal and conservative positions.

>> Rick Beggs: Okay, and would we find a lot of those on the Republican primary races? Would we see a lot of moderates?

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Honestly, we don't. I mean, as you hear about the rhetoric moving, people are getting polarized. We don't see a lot of moderates. we see more, mostly in the. To the, to the right side of the gauge, from the leans conservative over to the right with a smattering of liberals.

>> Rick Beggs: Okay, so the next dial towards full yes would be leans conservative.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Correct.

>> Rick Beggs: Describe what that would be.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: So, the, the three middle ratings, the leans liberal, moderate, and leans conservative, are all mixed data points. So you've got at least one liberal position, at least one conservative position. So you've got mixed data points. So the leans conservative, we would say, and I think if you hover over the gauge, that's a leans, it will tell you. Or click the little I. It says, as I do it on my computer, that they have mostly conservative positions, but at least one liberal position. So they're mixed data, but mostly conservative is what lands them in the leans conservative rating.

>> Rick Beggs: It took me a while. I had to find my little eye. I couldn't use my big eyes to find that little eye.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Oh, my goodness.

>> Rick Beggs: Okay, so Lien's conservative, then the next one is conservative.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Right. And I would say this is the most popular. I mean, this is where most of the candidates certainly in the Republican Party land, and it's, you know, we've got conservative data. Everything points to. They have conservative positions. We don't see any liberal data points. So, they may have, you know, some are more strong, stronger than others. Maybe we don't see their position on something, but we don't assume that if we don't see something, we don't assume it's liberal. No information is no information.

>> Rick Beggs: Yeah. now I know, at least in my state, we have some candidates that are businessmen, let's say, they have never held office. And I know last show we talked about data points. So if you didn't, hear the last show, you might want to go back. And how can they do that? Well, that's. I'm so glad you asked. They could go to afr, american familyradio.net net and you could find the broadcast there. Or if you're sophisticated, yes, you can go to AFR and, And actually get the app afr, and you can listen on there when the show is, aired on Saturdays or quite honestly, when it's podcasted, which.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: And I think you can get it on any podcast platform as well I'm thinking.

>> Rick Beggs: So we you know, have to ask our little producer Willie B. What how we do that. So anyway if you wanted to hear more about data points, you can go back to our last show and listen to that.

We use pixels to create a portrait of that businessman as a candidate

But I know we have some business guys who've never held office and yet they show up conservative. So how are we pulling if we can't use a scorecard or.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Right, so businessmen wouldn't have a scorecard, they wouldn't have been a legislator. But they, they very possibly have endorsements from conservative legislators. They very probably have campaign finance data where you know they're, they're successful business people. They've probably supported candidates that have been on the off in office previously. So we've got those donations they've made as individuals. We've got anybody who supported their campaign. A lot of businessmen self fund their campaign but they will still have given to other candidates. we have their questionnaire so frequently they'll answer the questionnaire and that'll give us a lot of data. They also have website and social media so we're looking at all of that as we create this collection of pixels to create a portrait of that businessman as a candidate.

>> Rick Beggs: What I also like is next to the gauge you have sort of listed the data points that we use, scorecards, contributions, endorsements, other information questionnaire. Somewhere in there I'm sure is their social media pages as well. So there's a lot of different data points that we've gathered as you have said these pixels to really have a clearer picture of what they do well

>> Debbie Wuthnow: and you'll see sometimes the next to the word of those data points it's a green little check mark and sometimes it's a little grayed out X. So the green check marks tell you that we found at least one thing in that, in that category on that candidate.

>> Rick Beggs: And can you make a good judgment then from one thing of a contribution or one thing of.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: We really try to not do it off of 1:1. Sometimes you'll see a rating of insufficient information.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: So that's where we just didn't get enough information to have any confidence in a rating. It doesn't mean there's nothing. It doesn't mean this might not be a good person. It just means that maybe they're not running the best campaign well, and haven't given enough information. Maybe their website doesn't go into detail on their policies. They just have very generic talking points. Maybe they've never Done campaign finance, they didn't answer our questionnaire. So it's, you know, or, you know, you go to their social media and it's them at different events, which doesn't tell us anything about how they'll govern. It just tells us they're campaigning. So, you know, we really seek to be truthful and make this on the data that we found. So, if you want to see what that data is, there is a way to see that.

>> Rick Beggs: Oh, tell us. Walk us.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: So when you are looking at that candidate and that gas gauge and all those little green check marks, if you click anywhere on that page, if you click on the photo, you click on the tile, it will take you to the, candidate profile page for that candidate, and it'll start at the top with his gauge. And then it'll have blue buttons for all the data points. It'll start to list, you know, what, what we know, what party are they in? What election is this? What race are they running for? Are they the incumbent? And then you might miss it. But there's a row that says links, and it's got little icons over at the right, for whatever we found on that candidate. Sometimes on candidates, that's about all we find. But you can go deeper because this is a link to go see their social media, their Instagram or their Facebook or their website. And there's. There's frequently a lot of more information on there, but keep scrolling. Everything else we found is down on that page.

>> Rick Beggs: It is amazing how much information is actually on this website. Of course, we talked a couple of shows ago about how many people are involved in that. I don't think it would hurt to tell the people. How many people are involved in evaluating these.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Well, we have about 75 staff members that are gathering the data and kind of managing the projects and overseeing the evaluations. And then we have almost a thousand volunteers across the nation who, we call them volunteer panelists. And they do the deep dive. They're the ones who go and look at the website and they look at the Instagram and they look at the Facebook and at their ex and, you know, really look for, any little nuggets that glean towards the political philosophy of this candidate. And they, you know, identify those to us and our team kind of analyzes it and make sure, you know, is this a liberal data point or conservative data point as we try to place them on that gas gauge as accurately as possible.

The ivoterguide rating system uses subjective criteria to identify conservative candidates

>> Rick Beggs: So, the last. When you're a full tank, you're a verified conservative.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Your tank Is full.

>> Rick Beggs: Yeah. What is, what does that mean?

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Verify? So I will tell you, we originally called that very conservative, but that's more kind of a subjective rating of, you know, are they, where are they landing on. On the spectrum? So. And our political spectrum don't go the other direction. But, we did, we determined that that was too subjective. And the thing that could be quantifiable was is there evidence or is there proof? Have they, have they verified that they will do the actions that are conservative? So that, rating is pretty much, you have to have proof. So it's, it's frequently people who failed office. It could be somebody who's held a state legislative office and now they're running for Congress. And those scorecards we're looking for, how did they vote on legislation? There are exceptions for, you know, people who've led ministries or been very out there in, tested by fire would be a phrase to describe it of, they've proved that they're going to do what they say they're going to do.

>> Rick Beggs: Okay. So if somebody is verified conservative, it doesn't mean somebody who landed on the conservative gauge isn't verified. We just haven't found proof yet to verify it.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Exactly. Well, yeah, and it could be, you know, even somebody who's rated insufficient really could be a conservative. We just have. Didn't have the data to prove it because we really, we build this candidate profile page so that you don't have to trust our rating. You can see everything that we used that led to that rating.

>> Rick Beggs: how important is it to be objective here?

>> Debbie Wuthnow: 150%. And that is the most difficult task that we have. Both, well, we train our staff, lots of practice and in getting, the panelists that can be objective because, you know, everybody has their one pet issue or their one concern or their favorite candidate. And our goal really is objective truth and to be objective in how we look at things. So, yeah, it's a challenge.

>> Rick Beggs: Yeah, I would, I would guess it is. and I would guess you would have some of these candidates come back to you and say to you, I don't agree with your findings. How do we deal with that?

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Well, it happens, sometimes people who use ivoterguide don't agree or candidates don't agree or, donors don't agree. And we just have to go back to, this is the data we gathered. We verified this data. This is sourced data. It's not hearsay, it's not gossip. And you can see all the data that we used and you know, we pray before every meeting. We go into all of this very prayerful. But we only know what we know. Right. There are sometimes things that we're not aware of. We didn't find it. I. Ideally we have local panelists who might know some information that is more locally known and can help us find that. Maybe local newspapers or whatever. So that's why we love, love, love, love to have panelists that are more locally, engaged, grassroots, ah, activists. But you still have to be objective.

>> Rick Beggs: Yeah.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Which is the.

>> Rick Beggs: Now we're basically talking today about federal races and maybe some top level state races, governors, lieutenant governors, things like that. But I know when we go down, farther down the ballot, which really is our goal is at some point we are doing judges, we're doing and we, I know we're doing some of them, but school board races, both, what a wonder to do them across the nation. But those are even tougher.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Well it's, it's more the. In fact our school board team has described it, finding the needle in the haystack because there's just so little information. The further down you the ballot you go, the harder it is to find the information.

>> Rick Beggs: And a lot of times you don't get an R or a D. You

>> Debbie Wuthnow: get nonpartisan, which doesn't even tell you a party that they align with. And I will tell you as a, as a voter who uses I voter guidelines and you'll see an insufficient information and you'll think, oh, they didn't find anything. I can tell you our team probably spent more time on those insufficients, digging and looking for something that could be a valid piece of information. So we, we don't like to give that rating but there's some just sometimes that that's, that's accurate. That's all we can say.

American Family Association looks for panelists through recruitment emails

>> Rick Beggs: Okay, so you, you mentioned panelists.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: I did.

>> Rick Beggs: How do we find them? Where do we get them?

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Well we find them through American Family Association. We find them through people who are signed up on ivoterguide's email list. So we send out recruitment emails to ivoterguides, users, our voters. AFA will send out, any of our partner organizations will send out a. When we're looking for panelists. But you can be listening right now and go sign up if you're interested in.

>> Rick Beggs: And you really do a pretty in depth interview process in regards to asking questions and making sure that we have somebody who can actually help and we

>> Debbie Wuthnow: want somebody who shares our values. So if you go and you apply and you can do that at the website. We'll tell you about that in a second. you have to fill out a survey of what your positions are, your values, and it looks kind of like how a candidate would answer our questionnaire. So it kind of gives you a peek behind the scale scenes and you give us three. We ask for three references and we call them. And we're looking for people who share our values, but also people who can be objective, as I said. So, that's part of the process. And then once we approve you as a panelist, we have some online self paced training that you do so that you learn what goes into all the data points. Where do you look, what you know, what are the ratings mean? What does, how do you look at campaign finance? All of that.

>> Rick Beggs: Yeah. And I know as we go down ballot, it'll become more important to be localized.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: very much so.

>> Rick Beggs: Yep. So even the fact that somebody would go to a school board meeting, which is real hard to get any information if you're trying to cover a school board race, having somebody at a meeting who's actually doing recordings of the meeting so you can hear what, taking notes even. But yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't even know if that's legal. Can you take a recording at a school board race?

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Probably take pencil and paper.

>> Rick Beggs: Yeah. Okay, well, there's so many ways to do that today. I, also wanted to mention at this moment too, because, now that we're been up and running for four shows, this being our fourth, we have the opportunity where people who are listening to us can actually write to us.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Ah.

>> Rick Beggs: so we have compass@I voter guide.com compassivoterguide.com what does that do that allows you to write a question or a thought. maybe you don't like my voice. Whatever you want to say. Sometimes it sounds a little too smooth,

>> Debbie Wuthnow: but we would honestly, seriously, seriously love to hear from you. So. And any questions you have, send them. We've got, you know, real people who will, answer them via email immediately and then Rick and I'll get to it on the air, you know, as time permits.

>> Rick Beggs: That actually be fun. I can imagine, somebody writing a question as going, we ought to do a show on that.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: We could just have a whole show on questions.

>> Rick Beggs: Yeah, it could be.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Send them in.

This is a balanced tool for faithful voters, whether you're conservative or liberal

>> Rick Beggs: Okay, so at ivoterguy, what else do we need to tell the people here in regards to the gauge to,

>> Debbie Wuthnow: from half to full?

>> Rick Beggs: Oh, you want to go the other way?

>> Debbie Wuthnow: I don't know. We could.

>> Rick Beggs: Well, if you're looking at the California one, this would be really important because you're going to see a lot of people on the half empty to empty side. So why don't we walk through that side of the gauge?

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Well, and the, the criteria is very similar and comparable. So you know, as we're looking and putting positions in the conservative or liberal category, when they were balanced, it was a moderate position. So if they, if and you know, when they had more conservative was leans conservative, it's more liberal positions. But yet maybe they're pro life. There used to be Democrats who were pro life Blue Dog Democrats. Right. Yeah, they, they're kind of a unicorn now. But if you have, you know, a one or two conservative positions, but most everything else is liberal, that would qualify leans liberal and then most of them are going to fall in liberal.

>> Rick Beggs: Yeah. I would also say too that this is because this platform is trying to be so honest and trustworthy. It would be equally important. Even if I didn't have any beliefs in a, in a biblical worldview, I might be able to look at I voter guide and see what the other side believes. And if I have a candidate over there, I can see how far over to the left they might be. So this really works for everybody.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: It's really a balanced tool for, I would say for faithful voters, whether you're on the right side of the gas gauge or the left side, because the data's all there and we are objective. We're not telling you who to vote for. We're not telling you need to be a conservative voter. So, it's just as useful to the left as it is to the right because it's just truth and data.

>> Rick Beggs: And goes, to our nice little tagline which says vote wisely.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Yes. We want everybody to do that.

>> Rick Beggs: Yeah. Regardless of what side you're on. And it's interesting because now, as you see, even liberal commentators who come out and now talk about, candidates on our side who are a little closer to what they believe rather than the radical left that has really been verified liberal or even beyond. We'll have to move actually. Yeah, we're actually pushing their car because there's no gas in it. Anyway, I, I just think this is a fascinating discussion and I think even the next time that we, we get together, we might want to take this even a step further in regards to how does this really affect the church. Well, Debbie, you know what that sound means? It means we're ready for an election update.

There are more primaries this week than any other this entire primary season

As you know, we're in that season of life where elections are happening all the time. Tell me what's happening this week.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Well, this week is a very busy week in the election front. there on June 2nd, there's going to be a special election in Arizona. But there are more primaries this week than any other this entire primary season. So primaries in California, your ballots need to be turned into the drop box by 8:00pm In Iowa, your polls are open from 7:00am to 8:00pm Montana, polls are from 7:00am to 8:00pm NewSong Jersey, 6:00am M. To 8:00pm NewSong Mexico, from 7:00am, to 7:00pm South Dakota, 7:00am to 7:00pm and California, again, get those ballots in by 8:00pm but there's also states with early voting that's going on. So the elections aren't for another week or two or more. but you're already able to submit, that, that mail in ballot or go to an early voting location. And again, you can help find that if you go to ivoterguide.com get your personalized ballot, there's a link to find your polling place. So in Maine you can vote and up through the 4th for your election, which will be on June 9th. North Dakota, the same case, you can vote up through the 8th for an election on the 9th. And we are covering some school boards and ballot measures in North Dakota. In Nevada, early voting goes through June 5th and your election is on the 9th. Again, we have more school boards there. And then South Dakota, early voting continues through June 5th. Your election will be on June 9th and that's what's going on this week on the election front.

>> Rick Beggs: Well, I would say that's a lot. but I also want to encourage people, don't just use ivoterguide, pass it on. Family members, neighbors, church folk. Let people know about ivoterguide.com thank you for being with us once again. It's always being with. Love being with you, Debbie, especially in person. And remember, on the compass, our true north is Jesus.

>> Debbie Wuthnow: Sam.