Ballotpedia, the encyclopedia of American politics, is excited to open applications for the Spring 2026 cohort of our Volunteer Fellows Program! As a trusted, nonpartisan online resource, we provide voters and readers with reliable information on elections, governance, and public policy.
As a Ballotpedia Fellow, you will help expand our data-driven analysis of American politics. The Spring 2026 program will focus on researching local candidates from across the country who will appear on the ballot in the 2026 elections.
The Spring 2026 Ballotpedia Fellows Program will run from Monday, February 23, through Friday, April 24, 2026. Fellows are asked to contribute 5-10 hours of work per week, which can be completed on a flexible schedule to accommodate school, extracurricular activities, or other commitments. Ballotpedia can provide documentation for community service hours, course credit, or other verification upon request (court-mandated hours cannot be counted). Fellows will need access to a computer or laptop and a reliable internet connection.
Requirements
Available Projects
Fellows may work on a variety of projects, including:
Local Candidate Research: Ballotpedia aims to cover every election in the country. As a Fellow, you will help build more complete local candidate profiles using the same research standards as full-time staff. Your work ensures that millions of voters have access to detailed information about the local candidates on their ballot. This includes gathering critical data points such as contact information, social media profiles, campaign websites, endorsements, and campaign themes.
Quality Assurance: Ballotpedia takes our commitment to quality and accuracy very seriously. Fellows help verify and validate candidate information entered by other volunteers. Some fellows will have the opportunity to review spreadsheets with candidate data to ensure data points are accurate and up-to-date.
Application and Onboarding Timeline
Application deadline: Wednesday, February 4, 2026
Application Review: Rolling responses through February 13, 2026
Onboarding: Monday, February 23 - Wednesday, February 25, 2026
To Apply
Interested applicants should submit their application, resume, and cover letter by selecting “Apply for this job” below and completing the form. This is an unpaid, volunteer position. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and offers are sent via email. Program capacity is limited, and positions are filled on a first-come, first-served basis.
Applicants may not hear from Ballotpedia regarding the initial status of their application until early February. For questions about the program, please contact Kaley Platek at [email protected].
Ballotpedia is a collaborative team of fast learners and creative problem solvers who are eager to work hard to make the world a better place. We believe the world will be a better place if every citizen has access to information to make informed decisions about their vote in every election in which they are eligible to vote: primary, general, and special elections; federal, state, and local offices. We work diligently to present the available information about elections, candidates, judges, ballot measures, policies, and more in a way that enables our readers to vote with confidence and to act as engaged citizens outside of the polling booth.Ballotpedia readers, like Ballotpedia staff, are special people. When we launched in 2007, we did not go out of our way to seek new readers. Starting with our small team of visionary idealists, nerds, and aspiring political journalists, we just wrote the best unbiased online articles we could, especially about ballot measures. Readers found those articles in droves. It turns out there was an unclaimed audience out there—people who wanted straightforward facts about political issues, and were willing to read at length instead of just scanning the headlines. “If you build it, they will come:'' our readers came to our neutral oasis in growing numbers; we’ve had many millions of lifetime pageviews, we reached nearly half of all voters in 2020, and, in the month surrounding the November 2020 election, we were the 77th most-visited website in the U.S.We’ve come to realize that we need to meet our readers where they are. In doing so, over the past five years, we’ve grown our email newsletter program from infancy to include more than 1,000,000 opt-in subscribers with more than a dozen newsletters to choose from. We scarcely had an email list before 2016. We are working in numerous ways to help put our neutral information in front of people at the times when they most need it, including on mobile phones while you’re standing in the voting booth. We firmly believe that our readers, and the mindset we help them cultivate, are essential to the preservation of our great civilization in a world where too many others are fighting to get us all addicted to sensational posts and the irrational decisions they foster.If this is a mission you’d be willing to work hard to achieve, and if this is a team you’d be willing to work hard with—JOIN US.
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