Ballotpedia:WikiProject Local Ballot Measures
From Ballotpedia
Contents |
This page will:
- Establish and organize local ballot measure article components.
- Establish preferred categories
- A way to sort out local ballot measures by issue
- A way to organize local ballot measures within their state.
- Portal:Local ballot measures
- Portal:Local ballot measure news
- WikiProject School Bond and Tax Elections is a subproject of this project.
Volunteers
Ballotpedia is looking for volunteers to cover local ballot measure elections in each of the 50 states.
Since 2009, we have covered all local ballot measures in 11 states. We're looking for volunteers:
- In those 11 states, to provide even more detailed coverage.
- In the other 39 states, to begin to develop this type of information in those states.
If you are interested in volunteering, you can either:
- Just get started on your own and see what develops.
- Send an email to johanna.herman@ballotpedia.org to let her know of your interest and asking whatever questions you may have.
Writing guidelines: Articles
| How to write about local measures |
|---|
| |
| Components |
| Title Introduction Aftermath Election results Text of measure Background Support Opposition Lawsuits Path to the ballot See also External links Additional reading References Categories Templates |
| News desk |
| The project |
Each article should have at least:
Order of components
We suggest the following order for the components in your article:
Ballotpedia: states covered
Below are a list of states covered by Ballotpedia:
Needs fixing
Article improvement
|
- See also: Articles to improve
As the project develops, some pages may be rapidly created and may need to be revisited at a later point. For more on articles that are missing components or may need improvement, click here.
- {{lbm update}}
- {{lbm expand}}
- {{lbm intro}}
- {{lbm missing}}
- {{lbm quality}}
Categories
State/year
- The primary category that each local ballot measure article should go in is a version of Category:Arizona 2009 local ballot measures.
- That category, in turn, becomes part of the parent categories Category:Local ballot measures, Arizona and Category:Local ballot measures, 2009
- Those categories, in turn, become part of their own parent categories.
- Category:Local ballot measures, 2009 goes into Category:Local ballot measures by year and Category:2009 ballot measures
- Category:Local ballot measures, Arizona goes into Category:Local ballot measures by state and Category:Arizona ballot measures.
Political topics
- Each local ballot measure article should be put into a category that has to do with its political topic.
- There is an entire page devoted to defining what categories to use: Help:Categories for local ballot measures
Images
- See also: Uploading and categorizing images
If you plan to upload images that relate to the Local Ballot Measures project...
For example, images of:
- campaign logos
- maps
- graphs
- documents
- ballot measure activists
... or if you need help identify appropriate categories for such images, go here for more details.
For specific guidelines on copyright or image permissions, visit the Images project page.
Organizing articles by county
In California, local ballot measures are organized according to their county. This seems to work well. There are 58 counties in California, and correspondingly, 58 articles, each called a variant of El Dorado County, California ballot measures. These articles are organized into a template: {{California counties}}. We also have {{California election dates}} because there are so many of them.
Any specific local ballot measure is then added to the page for the county. This anchors your work and gives you a reliable archive you'll build over time.
The preferred title for a county-based article is "Sample County, Name of state ballot measures." The county template for the state in question should be included at the end of the article.
County templates
Here's a list of all the county templates:
- {{Alabama counties}} | {{Alaska boroughs}} | {{Arkansas counties}} | {{Arizona counties}} | {{California counties}} | {{Colorado counties}} | {{Connecticut counties}} | {{Delaware counties}} | {{Florida counties}} | {{Georgia counties}} | {{Hawaii counties}} | {{Idaho counties}} | {{Illinois counties}} | {{Indiana counties}} | {{Iowa counties}} | {{Kansas counties}} | {{Kentucky counties}} | {{Louisiana parishes}} | {{Maine counties}} | {{Maryland counties}} | {{Massachusetts counties}} | {{Michigan counties}} | {{Minnesota counties}} | {{Mississippi counties}} | {{Missouri counties}} | {{Montana counties}} | {{Nebraska counties}} | {{Nevada counties}} | {{New Hampshire counties}} | {{New Jersey counties}} | {{New Mexico counties}} | {{New York counties}} | {{North Carolina counties}} | {{North Dakota counties}} | {{Ohio counties}} | {{Oklahoma counties}} | {{Oregon counties}} | {{Pennsylvania counties}} | {{Rhode Island counties}} | {{South Carolina counties}} | {{South Dakota counties}} | {{Tennessee counties}} | {{Texas counties}} | {{Utah counties}} | {{Vermont counties}} | {{Virginia counties}} | {{Washington counties}} | {{West Virginia counties}} | {{Wisconsin counties}} | {{Wyoming counties}} |
Election link added
Please remove templates from this list to signify that all county articles for the state in question have had an external link added that takes the reader to the elections office for that county, is in this example.
Completed
Existing articles added
Please remove templates from this list to signify that for the state in question, you've gone through all of BP's articles about local ballot measures in that state and added those links to the relevant "local ballot measures listed by county" and "local ballot measures listed by election date" articles that exist for that state.
Completed
Project templates
- {{lbm}} should be typed on the "talk" page for articles that are about local ballot measures.
- {{User WikiProject LBM}} can be added to your user page.
See also
- Help:How to add election dates to county templates
- Ballotpedia:WikiProject Local Ballot Measures/County election evaluations
Local ballot measure analysis
| | This page is part of WikiProject Local Ballot Measures, a WikiProject that exists in order to organize, expand and improve Ballotpedia's coverage of local ballot measures. |

