Tag Archives: elections

Campaign funding: interactive graphics

As we approached the off-year primary election in the spring of 2014, the reporting staff at The World in Coos Bay, Oregon, began looking for interesting ways to cover the races. We had started experimenting with interactive graphics (I created a simple funding timeline to accompany a reporter’s story.) and we thought this tool would be useful to show our readers where campaign funds came from and where they went. I worked with a reporter to obtain the necessary data from the Oregon Secretary of State website and we used the publicly available Tableau Public software to make connections within the data. This tool allowed us to sort through more than 5,000 rows of financial data to present it in a condensed, easy-to-navigate format.

One candidate, who ended up losing the election after her opponent out-fundraised her 7-1, tweeted …

This is a three-part graphics series. Please use the page navigation below.

Livingston County DA contest

Livingston County, N.Y., had one of the most interesting primary contests in 2012 as two candidates vied for the GOP nomination into the general election. Coverage of this race started with my colleagues at a larger daily paper, but when this story broke wide open our news team opted to assign coverage to me; although I typically ran on a weekly news cycle, my office was geographically closer and given the speed at which this story progressed my proximity proved critical in staying with this story.

Eric Schiener responds to questions from reporters following Wednesday's hearing in Rochester, where 7th District Supreme Court Judge John Ark ruled that Schiener will remain tied with opponent Steve Sessler.
Eric Schiener responds to questions from reporters following Wednesday’s hearing in Rochester, where 7th District Supreme Court Judge John Ark ruled that Schiener will remain tied with opponent Steve Sessler.

This is a multipart series that ran over a period of several weeks. Please use the page navigation below.

Get out and vote … if you can

I wrote this opinion in response to the decision by the Utah Republican Party to close their election to unaffiliated voters.

By Les Bowen for Vernal Express   |   June 18, 2008

I’m a firm believer that anyone who is going to criticize government should be part of the process.

That means showing up to public hearings and participating in public comment processes. And most importantly, it includes voting.

However, like many other voters in this state, I’m going to sit home next Tuesday. Like one third of this country’s voters, I’m officially unaffiliated. And while I admit that I swing left on most issues, I have voted for members of the Green, Libertarian, People’s Choice and Constitution parties, in addition to several votes for both Democrats and Republicans. Continue reading Get out and vote … if you can