Ballotpedia

Ballotpedia is a website that provides information on United States elections and candidates for voters. It started out as a community-contributed site, but is now only edited by paid staff. It has information related to both US Federal government and US state governments, with a database of information on U.S. state executives, legislators, districts, candidates for such positions and ballot measures.
The website claims to be neutral and accurate.Ballotpedia: About, Ballotpedia. At the time of writing, the Media Bias/Fact Check page classifies it as "Least Biased" and "Factual Reporting: Very High".Ballotpedia, Media Bias Fact Check. Due to the nature of the site, it does sometimes show decidedly non-factual quotes from other sources (such as public figures). Despite this, the site was founded by the Citizens In Charge Foundation, a libertarian activist organisation. The site is currently run by a remarkably well-fed nonprofit called the Lucy Burns Institute, which is substantially funded by Koch Industries money, funnelled in via various corporate shells.http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Ballotpedia Board members include Erick Erickson.The Lucy Burns Institute (Publishers of Ballotpedia, Judgepedia and WikiFOIA) and Her Right-Wing Bedfellows (Sara Jerving, PRWatch, 26 November 2012)
Although it looks like a wiki and uses MediaWiki as its CMS,Version Ballotpedia (archived from December 4, 2015). it is not publicly editable. Up until 2016 there was a group of "carefully vetted members of the general public" who could edit with every edit first reviewed by staff.Ballotpedia:Editors Ballotpedia (archived from 16 Jan 2016 19:00:36 UTC).User list Ballotpedia (archived from July 30, 2016).
==Neutrality and its problems==
The co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, was an early consultant for Ballotpedia.Why Neutrality? by Larry Sanger (December 30, 2015) Ballotpedia. Sanger left the leadership of Wikipedia in 2002, and has since become critical of Wikipedia not hewing to a strictly neutral point of view (NPOV).“Wikipedia is a broken system,” says co-founder Larry Sanger by Sophie Foggin (May 23, 2019) 150 Sec.Inside Wikipedia's leftist bias: socialism pages whitewashed, communist atrocities buried: "The days of Wikipedia's robust commitment to neutrality are long gone," co-founder Larry Sanger said. by Maxim Lott (February 18, 2021) Fox News (archived from February 18, 2021). Sanger wrote a 2015 essay on NPOV for Ballotpedia, which presumably also explains Ballotpedia's position on NPOV. Although Sanger acknowledges the existence of "false balance" (balance fallacy), his example of NPOV for global warming is rather skewed away from adequately acknowledging the balance fallacy:
Sanger wrote this in 2015, but by 2004 it was already the case that there was scientific consensusThe Scientific Consensus on Climate Change by Naomi Oreskes (2004) Science 306:1686. doi:10.1126/science.1103618. and by 2010, it had reached 97-98% agreement among climate scientists that climate change was real and anthropogenic.Expert credibility in climate change by William R. L. Anderegg et al. (2010) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(27):12107–12109. doi:10.1073/pnas.1003187107. and has since risen to >99%.Greater than 99% consensus on human caused climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature by Mark Lynas et al. (2021) Environmental Research Letters 16(11):1-7. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966. Sanger was arguing that there was still a debate on the reality of climate change in 2015, when there wasn't one at all, i.e., the balance fallacy. Arguably, Sanger and subsequently Ballotpedia are NPOV extremists.
Later in the essay, Sanger argued along the lines of supporting the argumentum ad populum fallacy measles vaccination, thereby giving oxygen to Andrew Wakefield's antivax bullshit:
Sanger does not even acknowledge that the Centers for Disease Control says that the MMR vaccine is extremely safe and effective,Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) Vaccine (Page last reviewed: September 9, 2020, 12:00 AM) Centers for Disease Control. or that deaths in the US from measles dropped from 503,282 pre-vaccine availability to 89 post-vaccine availability.Epidemics have happened before and they’ll happen again. What will we remember? A look back at past epidemics reveals progress in research and medicine as well as reminders of what still needs changing by Aimee Cunningham (October 27, 2021 at 12:00 pm) Science News.
Neutrality is all well and good when dealing with easily verified facts, such as who and what is on an election ballot, what responses a candidate for office has given on issues, etc. However, once one starts getting into more complex issues such as science, medicine or general politics, neutrality becomes fraught with the balance fallacy (giving equal weight to refuted or crank ideas), and argumentum ad populum (a logical fallacy that occurs when something is considered to be true or good solely because it is popular).
So, let's throw a bunch of opinions on the wall and you can pick the one that you like.
===Dead people voting===
From 2014-2018, the staff worked to look like they were putting in more effort than they were. e.g. on the surface, the "Dead people voting news" page looks like it's filled with many news articles of actual cases of dead people voting, but it's just a Google news script of "Dead + People + Voting + [fill-in state]", which is a poorly conceptualized search without any real stories.Dead people voting Ballotpedia (archived from 1 May 2014 04:23:08 UTC).Dead people voting Ballotpedia (archived from November 9, 2018). Since 2018, the page redirects to a "Votes cast in the names of deceased people" page that gives equal weight to the views of the Heritage Foundation, the Government Accountability Office, the Pew Center on the States (), and the Votes cast in the names of deceased people Ballotpedia.
Ballotpedia tries to portray the Heritage Foundation ("conservative") and the Brennan Center ("progressive") as simply views on opposite sides of the political spectrum, however the Heritage Foundation is known for spreading bullshit (e.g., climate change denial and evolution denial), whereas the Brennan Center is not.Brennan Center for Justice (Last updated on April 29th, 2021 at 03:02 pm) Media Bias/Fact Check.Heritage Foundation (Last updated on March 15th, 2021 at 05:16 pm) Media Bias/Fact Check. This is a case of the balance fallacy. Both the GAO and the Pew Research Center are nonpartisan.
===Face masks===
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ballotpedia created two separate web pages showing arguments supporting and opposing face mask requirements (relevant expertise in bold): 
Holding expert opinions to be more authoritative and reliable is generally a good thing to do. Not every expert is correct, that's why scientists have disagreements. Consulting a range of experts often gets one closer to the truth or at least to avoiding bad outcomes. In the field of communicable diseases such as COVID, experts would come from the fields of epidemiology, public health, MDs who specialize in infectious diseases, and science journalists (who typically have a science degree and are trained to communicate science to the public). A simple MD (e.g., general practitioner), or an MD in an unrelated field (e.g., surgery) is not an expert in this case.
Here we can see that expertise does not matter to Ballotpedia either for within a position or between positions: only 5/21 opinions supporting and 2/20 opposing positions could be considered written by experts in the field. This is especially peculiar because of Sanger's view on how to present information on NPOV, as well as Sanger's creation of Citizendium, an expertise-based Wiki.
===Views on the role of greenhouse gases in global warming===
Ballotpedia's page on greenhouse gases in global warming was created on or before 2018 and has not been updated as of 2021Greenhouse gases and global warming Ballotpedia (archived from November 7, 2018). Greenhouse gases and global warming Ballotpedia (archived from December 9, 2021). despite evolving science and the establishment of scientific consensus in 2004 or earlier.The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change by Naomi Oreskes (2004) Science 306(5702):1686. doi:10.1126/science.1103618.
Four positions are given for each. The 'support' positions include The IPCC (the summary conclusions of >400 climate scientistsBangkok hosts key climate summit (30 April 2007, 08:27 GMT) BBC.) and three individual climate scientists. The 'oppose' positions include opinions from two organizations affiliated with the fossil fuel industry (NIPCC via Heartland Institute and Global Warming Policy Foundation) and two from individual climate scientists. No real context is given for these opinions, and the opinion of >400 climate scientists is given equal weight with a single climate scientists. This is a false balance (balance fallacy).
==See also==
*Zombies — undead people voting
==External links==
* The site
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Elections
Category:Kochsphere
Category:Wikis