Researching to Vote: I Side With Review

Image Source: Pixabay

With the presidential and congressional elections nearing, it is of utmost importance that we take the time to responsibly educate ourselves on candidates, current measures on our ballot, and review our political stance overall. While the plethora of websites, news articles and resources can be overwhelming with their available information, the non-partisan site, I Side With, has personally helped me the most in educating myself on issues and evaluating my stance. 

Amongst other functions, I Side With uses a comprehensive quiz to help concerned voters to find candidates that align with their views. This quiz is organized by topic, such as environmentalism, immigration and domestic policy. Under each question are brief descriptions of the issue, as well as links to find more background on the topic and statistics. 

During the quiz, voters have the option to choose from yes, no, a range of qualified responses, or to submit their own response. I absolutely loved how this website allowed me to freely explore my stance by giving me options outside of the typical “yes or no” answers. Following each question is a scale that asks the quiz-taker to rate the importance of the issue; this plays a major role not only in exploring prioritization of issues, but also in evaluating which political parties are closest to sharing your concerns. 

Afterwards, the results use percentages, graphs and charts to rank candidates with your submitted stances and explain your political personality. Even if you do not vote for the recommendations based on the quiz, the quiz itself is a wonderful way to start exploring oneself and researching issues in order to make educated decisions. 

Your vote counts — use it wisely!