If you’re waiting until lunch or after work to go and vote today, here are five sites that break down the issues in Tuesday’s midterm election. From BuzzFeed News to Gawker to Mashable to Vice to Vox, each offers up guides on specific races and issues, told in their own style. Many also have liveblogs ready to update with results.
Also, from Friday, my colleague Andrew Beaujon wrote “How news orgs plan digital coverage of midterms,” with coverage plans from some of the big media organizations. If your news org is telling the story of today’s election in a new or interesting way, please let us know. You can write something in the comments, email me or tweet me at @kristenhare.
Let’s start with BuzzFeed News, which looked at marijuana with “Legally High: Marijuana Initiatives On The Ballot In Three States And D.C.” on Friday, Oct. 31. From Michelle Broder Van Dyke:
Legislatures have been slow to support marijuana, so advocates have taken action by pushing for voter decided ballot measures. On Nov. 4, Residents in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., will decide whether to legalize marijuana. In Florida and Guam, a U.S. territory, voters will decide on a medical marijuana program, and a few cities have added decriminalization bills to the ballot.
Here’s BuzzFeed News’ liveblog.
Gawker took a bigger stab at the election with “The Gawker Voter’s Exhaustive Guide to the 2014 Midterm Elections” by Adam Weinstein.
Voting sucks. Off-year voting sucks the worst. Like Valentine’s, Election Day 2014 seems less a heartfelt chance to express preferences than a mandate to give one’s limited purchasing options a whiff of will and legitimacy. You can be forgiven for inattention. But you still must make some choices. Here’s some info to help.
From Mashable, “Guns, weed and abortion: The issues up for a vote in 2014,” by Colin Daileda.
There’s a handy map, too.
Guns, weed and abortion: The biggest issues on the ballot today, by state http://t.co/tWEBRilAqa pic.twitter.com/ugT4WrBXlJ
— Mashable (@mashable) November 4, 2014
Mashable also has a cool roundup of some crazy ads we’ve seen this season.
From Vice, “The VICE Guide to the Midterms,” by Grace Wyler.
The 2014 midterm elections are next week, and if you are like virtually everyone else in America, you give zero fucks.
I mean, say it out loud: “midterms.” Even its name is an affront to American exceptionalism. But if you think that its inherent lameness excuses you from caring, you’re wrong. On November 4, a small group of voters–mostly old, white ones–will determine the future of the country for the next two years. And you’re going to have to live with their choices. Keep going down this road and sooner or later you’re going to wake up and realize that Charlotte Clinton Santorum is president, your kids don’t believe in evolution, and the street signs are in Chinese. And you’ll only have yourself to blame.
And from Vox, “9 damn good reasons to go vote today,” by Ezra Klein.
This election, like every election, matters. It matters for reasons we know, and it matters for reasons we don’t yet know. But I’m not sure we in the media have done a great job explaining why it matters. We’ve said a lot about who might win, and we’ve said a lot about campaign strategies, and we’ve said a lot about how this election seems to be boring everyone. But I’m not sure we’ve made the stakes as clear as they could be. So here they are.
Here’s Vox’s liveblog.
