Partnerships
Work with us
Ballot Explained is early. The consumer product is free and stays free — but if there is a version of this that would be useful to your organization, your readers, or your members, we would like to hear about it.
hello@ballotexplained.comWays this could work
A few directions, none of them fixed.
These are starting points rather than packages. The first few partners will shape what this actually becomes.
A voter guide for your audience
Your logo, your colors, your editorial introduction, on your own domain or embedded in your site. Readers stay with you; the ballot lookup and research run underneath.
Local newsrooms · libraries · universities · civic nonprofits
Sponsor a guide
Underwrite coverage for a county, a metro area, or a whole state, with clear attribution. Sponsors have no influence over research — that rule is published and structural.
Credit unions · employers · foundations · community organizations
Advertising
Standard display inventory across ballot pages, office explainers, and voting guides. High-intent civic traffic, concentrated in the weeks before an election.
Regional and national advertisers
Newsroom collaboration
You already cover these races. Pair your reporting with the ballot lookup so readers can go from a story to their own ballot and back.
Reporters and editors covering elections
Data and licensing
Structured ballot, office, and jurisdiction data — including the address-to-district resolution — for use in your own product.
Civic tech · researchers · platforms
Something else
This is early enough that the shape is genuinely open. If there is a version of this that would be useful to you, it is worth a conversation.
Anyone with a reason to care
What works today
- Address-to-ballot resolution in all 50 states and DC
- Every federal, state, county, municipal, judicial and special district contest
- Candidate research with sourced arguments for and against
- Ballot measure explainers with official text and YES/NO consequences
- Plain-English explainers for every office on a U.S. ballot
What would be built with a partner
- Branding, custom domains, and embedding
- Editorial controls and custom sections
- Analytics and reporting
- API access
- Election night results
Listed honestly: these do not exist yet. What gets built first depends on who turns up and what they actually need.
Non-negotiable
What a partner can and can't change.
A branded guide is only worth carrying if readers can trust it. That requires firm limits.
You control
- • Branding, colors, logo, and domain
- • Your editorial introduction and framing
- • Your own reporting alongside the research
- • Which races get priority
- • Your own advertising
Nobody controls
- • Candidate order — always ballot order
- • Removing a candidate from a contest
- • Editing research without visible attribution
- • Removing confidence disclosures or source links
- • Suppressing unfavorable information
The same applies to sponsors and advertisers. There is no mechanism by which paying money could change what the research says — ordering is fixed and no candidate score exists to adjust. Read the rules.
Tell us what you have in mind
Pricing depends entirely on scope, and at this stage it is a conversation rather than a rate card. If it is useful to you and sustainable for us, there is probably a deal.
Email hello@ballotexplained.com