Internship Location: Remote
Organization Type: Nonprofit
Policy Areas: Differed depending on each candidate researched
My time spent at Ballotpedia taught me the importance of local elections and providing true and nonpartisan information to the American population. While doing my candidate research I used many of the skills learned in my public affairs classes to make determinations on the policy positions that each candidate was supporting and how to most effectively communicate that information to our website. One thing that surprised me was the sheer amount of local elections this year. These elections are full of people who are trying to make real change in their communities and my work researching them made me realize how important it is to vote in all elections not just ones for the president and other nation/statewide elections. I would recommend this internship to future students because as political media becomes more polarizing it is important to help contribute to a nonpartisan organization that is providing truthful information to all voters. This made me think about a future career in working in political research as I really enjoyed the work that I did this past summer at Ballotpedia.