How do I research candidates I've never heard of?

Start with the office, not the candidate

You cannot evaluate a candidate for an office you cannot describe. Before reading anything about the people running, find out what the position controls and what it cannot do.

This reframes the whole exercise. A candidate for register of deeds promising to lower your taxes is telling you they either do not understand the job or are counting on you not to.

A source hierarchy that holds up

Weight sources by how directly they document what happened, not by how confidently they are written:

• Official election authority records — who filed, ballot order, and whether the seat is contested.
• Government and legislative records — actual votes cast, meeting minutes, budget decisions, court filings.
• The candidate's own campaign materials — useful for stated positions, but they are claims, not verified facts.
• Reputable local journalism — especially outlets that cover the body the candidate is running for, week in and week out.
• Nonpartisan civic organizations — league voter guides and candidate questionnaires.
• Advocacy organizations and endorsements — genuinely informative, but read them as positions, not findings.

What to actually look for

For incumbents, the record beats the rhetoric: how they voted, what they sponsored, whether they showed up. Attendance records for local boards are public and revealing.

For challengers, look for relevant experience and specificity. A candidate who can name the actual pressures facing the body — an enrollment decline, a jail staffing shortage, a specific rezoning fight — has done more homework than one running on general themes.

For judicial candidates, evaluate legal experience, prior judicial service, bar association evaluations, and written opinions. Judicial ethics rules limit what candidates may promise about future cases, so policy positions are the wrong lens.

When there isn't enough information

For many local offices, there is little reliable public information about the candidates. This is genuinely common and is not a failure of your research.

Leaving a contest blank does not invalidate the rest of your ballot. An undervote in one race is recorded as no vote in that race and every other choice you made still counts.