How to use voting districts to kickstart community listening

Think about your go-to sources during an election cycle. Who do you rely on to help you put the local contests in perspective? To provide a bigger picture about the top issues? To give you that quote that summarizes the trend in the numbers?

In short, who turns up frequently as an expert? Who can you count on to take your call or answer your email on a deadline? Most veterans in local news organizations will be able to name those sources quickly.

I want to challenge local journalists to break this habit. Because how often on those calls do those sources surprise you with their insight? How often do they take your story in a direction you weren’t already heading? How often do you learn something new and interesting — something truly useful or delightful to share with your readers?

One of the north stars in my work both on the Public Ledger and as a consulting editor is to help reporters and editors spend more of their time — most of their time — working on meaningful and complex stories, the ones that really deliver on helping audiences understand how a place works, the characters in charge of those decisions, and the reader or listener’s ability to impact the process.

And during an election season, in each of your communities, there are many more “experts” who can help you tell stories with more depth and character about what voters need, want and expect from their elected officials and local governments. Those same sources are also super connected in their neighborhoods — they are valuable relationships to cultivate and rely on long after election night.

To find those new voices, apply the asset mapping method to your voting districts. Below, I explain more about how to do this in a tight news cycle.

First, learn how your coverage area is structured politically

Every jurisdiction is divided up into a set of “voting districts,” a generic term used by the U.S. Census to describe the boundaries that group registered voters into contiguous areas based on their primary residential address.

In your area, these might also be called “wards” or “divisions” — and you may have layers to them that look different depending on the level of government you are looking at. The smallest unit will be the “precinct,” the grouping that determines where registered voters go to vote in their neighborhood and which races appear on their ballot.

Second, apply the asset mapping method

You can use this map to then find the people and organizations who support that political system — especially those working at the grassroots level. An easy place to start includes:

Local party leaders. Below the state party organization, you’ll find these leaders at the county level and, often, at the various voting district levels (i.e., ward chair).And while a few of those names may already be on your call list, you’ll find many new voices by knowing who the party committee people are. (They are also sometimes referred to as precinct captains).

Typically, both parties will elect or appoint two committeemen and two committeewomen to a precinct. These are the super volunteers who help the parties and the candidates canvass the neighborhoods with petitions and voter registration applications. They also help host house parties to introduce candidates to the neighborhood and arrange rides to the polls for voters on Election Day. In short, their job is to thoroughly know the voters and the issues in their neighborhood.

Poll workers. These are volunteers whose names should be part of the public record, particularly those who oversee the polling location the day of the election. In Pennsylvania, for example, that person is known as the “judge of elections” and is elected to serve a four-year term. Typically, the people who sign up for this work are also very engaged in the neighborhood they live in — and they tend to know everybody.

Donors. Use your local historical campaign finance reports to identify the notable donors in your neighborhoods. For example, look for the donors who tend to give consistently to their district representatives every year — or the ones who perennially support the challengers. Look for the ones who consistently give first and the ones who appear to influence others to give. These are political players who operate behind the scenes and are likely well-informed about how things are working (or at least in a good position to hear things of interest).

Candidate committee treasurers. In local races, these can be friends or family members of the candidates. But just as often, people named to this position signal the level of trust and support the candidate has in a particular community. Again, these are knowledgeable people doing the work outside of the limelight. You should know them. You want them to trust you.

Vendors and event spaces. You can also use the expenses itemized in the historical campaign finance reports to find the businesses frequented by the candidates of both parties. Where are political fundraisers held? Which restaurants and coffee shops are go-to places for meetings? Which local business owners print the flyers and the yard signs and make the buttons?

Social clubs and churches. What groups invite candidates to speak? Which local places are on the circuit?

Third, do a precinct analysis to help you prioritize where you want to spend more time listening and engaging.

After mapping out all of the people and organizations connected to your voting districts, you’ll find you have a very large list of potential new sources. In Allegheny County, Pa., for example, there are 1,327 voting precincts. Just identifying the committee people who represent each precinct creates a substantial source list.

That helps on deadline — when an issue or question arises in a particular place, you have a ready directory to consult. But if you want to do deeper community and audience work, where should you spend more time engaging and listening? How do you prioritize your resources?

A precinct analysis can help your newsroom make this call. This is a tool used by

candidates and their campaign staff to identify trends geographically among registered voters. They use it to determine where the candidate can best spend their time and money. Newsrooms, too, can take the same approach.

The simplest method is to look at voter registration and turnout historically. Which precincts or higher-level voting districts have the highest turnout or registration? The lowest? The fastest changing? The most dramatic recent shifts? Compare municipal election years to presidential election years. Which grouping your news outlet decides to focus on will, of course, be dependent on your news priorities.

You can also decide to group voters by particular council districts or other legislative seats. And you can do a deeper analysis, grouping voters by demographics or other recent and locally significant patterns (ie., school closings, economic changes or housing shifts, for example).

Then, when you’ve identified where the voters are that you are most interested in, you can go back to your asset map to find the places to go and the sources who can help give you that deeper context and make introductions.

Lastly, plan for post-election

Your map of political assets and your precinct analysis work should live on in your news organization as institutional resources — with plans to maintain them, make them accessible across departments, and name an owner to be accountable for that work. These are data tools that will be useful to reporters on all beats, year-round. Remember the list of people you created are those who are super engaged in their neighborhoods and in local political decision-making — and they will be throughout the year, not just during the pre-election months. The voting turnout trends can continue to guide reporters as they look for the best neighborhoods to canvass or people to reach out to when issues hit the agendas of the governing agencies.

I leave you with this thought: We cannot effectively track and report on all the local governing agencies and elected officials in our coverage areas with people alone. That was a challenge even in places that used to have 200-plus reporters in a newsroom. Local data — the information that exists as public record and the knowledge your people have — can be more useful to your news outlet with a strategy to consistently collect, maintain and share it.

As a consulting editor, AmyJo Brown’s work focuses on the organizational challenges specific to doing good journalism at the local level — particularly related to the goal of sustaining and improving local government coverage. She is also building out The Public Ledger, a data tool and strategy she designed to help newsrooms map local power structures and get more visibility into how the system works.