The primary election is Tuesday, May 27. Declining voter turnout in primary elections and the tendency for voters on the hard right and left to turnout even when everyone else stays home is one of the reasons we often get elected officials who are more extreme than we are as a people. This is why voting in the primaries, as well as generals, is one of the two commitments we all made when we joined The Common Interest.

Be sure to vote on May 27. And encourage your friends and neighbors to do the same. They are also free to review this voter information. No membership is required to access this information. One effective way for you to make a difference is to e-mail your family and friends to encourage them to vote and to include a link to this page. If you're reading this page and are not a member, we hope you'll join us! All registered Idaho voters can sign up as members by clicking here.

In Idaho, we register to vote as Idahoans, not as Republicans, Democrats, or anything else. Since candidates in primary elections are seeking not only to become their party's nominee, but ultimately to represent Idahoans generally, we have an open primary. You may vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary. At least for now. The Republican Party is currently seeking to close the primary, a position that we are actively opposing. When you go to the polls you must choose either the ballot for the Republican primary races or for the Democratic primary races.

You can access the information on candidates in your legislative district by clicking on the appropriate link to the right.

Our information includes how often incumbents voted with our positions. We also sent incumbents a questionnaire inviting them to tell us where they stand on issues that have not yet been voted on by both the full House and Senate but on which we've taken positions. Similarly, we report the positions of challengers who responded to our questionnaire.

We believe it is valuable to know how candidates voted, or would have voted, on the issues on which we took positions. Those positions reflect a strong consensus among typically more than 100 common citizens who took an hour or more to study out the issue in question. The briefing materials for each issue can be accessed on the left hand side of the homepage.

However, no numeric score can fully capture a candidate. We encourage your thoughtful consideration of each candidate as a whole. We have invited candidates to explain their votes where they voted against our position if they wished. Many have taken that opportunity and their explanations are also provided.

To help evaluate candidates beyond what our scorecard can tell you about them, we also invited candidates to provide supplementary information.

Thank you for taking the time to thoughtfully exercise the privilege of voting in this extraordinary system of government by the people.

If you have suggestions for other information we should post, including links to other voter information sites, please e-mail us at: info@TheCommonInterest.org

Other Voter Information

Idaho Public Television has excellent voter information. In addition to information about candidates and links to lots of other relevant websites (including ours!), their website has information about the debates they're hosting. You can even view the past debates online.

The Idaho Statesman has a handy, high-tech voter guide that allows you to compare various candidates and prepare and print out how you want to complete your ballot. For those in the Treasure Valley, you can even put in your address and it will bring up the relevant legislative and county races. But even if you don't live in the Statesman's coverage area, they provide useful information on statewide and congressional races.

The Spokesman-Review provides a helpful page on the website that lists all their election related articles and candidate profiles.