With just one weekend left until the election, you may feel pretty confident about your choice for president, but are you up to date on the race for state auditor? PollVault.com lets you see your federal and state ballots online so you won't get caught unprepared in the voting booth Tuesday.
Further, PollVault includes opinions from a wide variety of sources, such as the Sierra Club, the NRA and Planned Parenthood, as well as your city newspaper. You also may see the opinions of Facebook friends if they have filled in their ballots, or you can request that they do. Users can put together their own panel of 10 so-called advisers from PollVault's list.
The idea is to make it easy for people to cast informed votes. "Very few voters — particularly young voters — go into the voting booth knowing everything they'll find on their ballot," said Andy Bernstein, executive director of HeadCount.org, which partnered with PollVault on this project.
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PollVault has not forgotten local elections. The company is testing local ballots in its hometown of San Francisco. If the pilot program is successful for this election, the company plans to expand it across the U.S.
For now, PollVault is a self-funded venture and doesn't make money — the information you provide when filling out your sample ballots will not be sold to campaigns or other organizations, PollVault says in its FAQ section. But while it will not sell individual voter information, the company says it intends to license its poll results. For instance, PollVault may sell data that shows the percentage of voters in counties who favor gun rights, but your name would not be associated with your opinion.
On voting day, smartphone users can refer to their PollVault ballots via mobile browser; otherwise, people can print the results for easy reference.