Ballotpedia:Our definition of candidacy
From Ballotpedia
A political candidate is a person who is running for elected office.
Official candidates are people who:
- Register with a federal or state campaign finance agency before the candidate filing deadline
- Appear on candidate lists released by government election agencies
Declared candidates are people who have not completed the steps to become an official candidate. However, they may have done the following:
- Appeared in candidate forums or debates
- Published a campaign website
- Published campaign social media pages
- Advertised online, on television, or through print
- Issued press releases
- Interviewed with media publications
Ballotpedia publishes profile pages for official candidates. However, we encourage declared candidates to complete Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey. This will enable their Ballotpedia profile page to be more informative for voters once they become an official candidate. Ballotpedia also adds declared candidates to our database, although they are flagged separately from the official candidates.
There are some complicated or uncommon cases that may not fit cleanly within this definition of candidacy. Here is how we approach each of them prior to the state's release of the official candidate list:
- Noteworthy candidates: A noteworthy person, such as an elected official or public figure, may announce their candidacy for an office prior to registering with a federal or state campaign finance agency. In this situation, Ballotpedia would treat their candidacy as official based on the initial announcement instead of waiting for their paperwork to be filed. For example, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his candidacy for U.S. President on May 16, 2019, but he did not file his paperwork with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) until May 20, 2019. Ballotpedia updated his profile to include his presidential candidacy on May 16.
- Personal filings vs. committee filings: Candidates are not required to file a statement of candidacy with the FEC until their campaign has raised or spent more than $5,000. If a person has not yet registered a statement of candidacy with the FEC but has filed a statement of organization for a committee in support of their campaign, Ballotpedia would treat that as a reasonable substitute for a personal filing and treat their candidacy as official. We apply the same approach to state executive, state legislative, and state judicial candidates who have an active committee registered with their state's campaign finance agency but have not personally filed yet. For example, New Hampshire Executive Councilor and gubernatorial candidate Andru Volinsky registered a candidate committee with the New Hampshire Secretary of State's office on April 3, 2019. Ballotpedia considered this committee filing equivalent to the candidate personally registering with the campaign finance agency.
- Joint-ticket candidates: Candidates for U.S. President and governor (in some states) may choose a running mate without that person ever needing to run for election separately. In that situation, the presidential or gubernatorial candidate is campaigning on a joint ticket with their running mate in which both candidates' names are listed on the ballot together. If elected, the running mate becomes the U.S. Vice President or the state's lieutenant governor, respectively. Ballotpedia will cover running mates if they have been announced as such by a noteworthy presidential candidate or a gubernatorial candidate who meets our definition of official candidacy, even if the running mate has not registered with a campaign finance agency or appeared on a government-published candidate list yet.
- Convention candidates: A person who is running in a political party's convention either to win that party's nomination outright or to appear on the primary ballot for that party. In the latter case, this can be an alternative to getting on the ballot by paying a filing fee and gathering petition signatures. Ballotpedia does cover convention candidacies if they are publicized in advance of the convention, but we denote the convention nature of the candidacy in our coverage.
- Non-certified candidate lists: A person may appear on a candidate list released by the government election agency, but the list has not yet been certified. This could be because the state allows for candidates to withdraw from the election after the filing deadline, or the state is still certifying candidate petition signatures and candidacy residency, or people are allowed a certain timeframe to object to the validity of a candidate's petition signatures or residency. Ballotpedia does cover candidacies from non-certified candidate lists published by government election agencies, but we monitor those lists to ensure that we capture any changes to the candidate list until it has been certified.
- Write-in candidates: A person who has not qualified to appear on the ballot can file paperwork to have write-in votes for them officially counted as legitimate. Ballotpedia does cover qualified write-in candidacies, but we denote the write-in nature of the candidacy in our coverage.
- In states that publish a list of qualified write-in candidates, we will only cover write-in candidates who appear on that list.
- In states that do not publish a list of qualified write-in candidates, we will only cover write-in candidates who have contacted Ballotpedia to confirm their intention to run and who can provide a filing with a campaign finance agency or a confirmation from the election office that write-in votes for them will be tallied and reported separately.
- In either case, we will also retroactively add coverage of write-in candidates we were not aware of previously if they appear in the final certified election results for a race as long as they received at least 0.5% of the overall vote. However, we will only be able to do so if the votes for them are reported separately in the final certified election results, instead of being grouped together with all other write-in votes.
- Satirical but legitimate candidates: A person may declare that they are running for office in a satirical or otherwise non-serious manner. For example, Joseph Camp announced bids in 2020 for U.S. President, U.S. Senate, and U.S. House. On his campaign's Facebook page, Camp described his 2020 political candidacies as "Political Satire, Parody, and Jest." However, since Camp did register with the FEC for each of these three candidacies and publicly indicated his intentions to make it on to the actual ballot, Ballotpedia considered his candidacy official. We did add an explanatory note about the satirical nature of his candidacy to the introduction of his profile.
- Candidates who have not disclosed their legal name: A person may declare that they are running for office but use a pseudonym instead of releasing their legal name. For example, a person using the pseudonym of Socrateaz Neat Chi announced a bid in 2019 for U.S. Senate. Since this person did not disclose their legal name, Ballotpedia did not treat their candidacy as official and did not include it in our coverage of that election.
- People with uncommon legal names: A person may have a legal name that is uncommon. For example, a person legally named Vermin Supreme appeared on the Democratic presidential primary ballot in New Hampshire in 2016. Ballotpedia applies the standard criteria for official candidacy to people with uncommon legal names.
- Illegitimate candidates: A person may register with a federal or state campaign finance agency but not be a legitimate candidate. For example, a person filed a statement of candidacy for Pika Chu (the name of a video game character) for U.S. Senate in Georgia on October 24, 2019. The addresses listed for the candidacy matched the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and the Georgia State Capitol. Although the FEC published the submission, Ballotpedia did not include Pika Chu in our election coverage since we deemed this to be an illegitimate candidacy. However, if an illegitimate candidate does make it on to the ballot, Ballotpedia will include them in our coverage.
Click here to read more about Ballotpedia's editorial approach to election coverage.
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