--- title: "How to Evaluate a Candidate Before You Vote" url: https://www.hererockhill.com/pool-article/how-to-evaluate-a-candidate-before-you-vote/ date: 2026-05-16T14:45:22+00:00 modified: 2026-05-16T14:45:22+00:00 author: "" site: "HERE Rock Hill" attribution: "HERE Rock Hill" --- # How to Evaluate a Candidate Before You Vote > A practical, non-partisan checklist for sizing up anyone running for office — from city council to Congress. Voting record, money trail, debate performance, endorsements, and the claims they make on mailers. *Source: [HERE Rock Hill](https://www.hererockhill.com/pool-article/how-to-evaluate-a-candidate-before-you-vote/) — May 16, 2026 by * **Voting is a hiring decision.** You are picking somebody to make rules that touch your taxes, your roads, your schools, and your kids’ classrooms. The same checklist a smart hiring manager uses on a job candidate works on a political one: look at the actual work, follow the money, listen to how they answer hard questions, and check who is vouching for them. This guide walks through six places to look — none of them require a degree in political science, and most of the information is free and online. ## 1. Pull their actual voting record Talk is cheap; recorded votes are not. Every member of Congress, every state legislator, and every city or county council member in the United States produces a public roll-call record. If a candidate is an incumbent, that record is the single best predictor of how they will vote next term. - **Federal:** Congress.gov for U.S. House and Senate. Each member has a profile page with every recorded vote. - **State legislature:** Most state legislative sites publish bill histories with vote tallies. In some states (including South Carolina), the legislature also publishes committee testimony — a richer signal than the final vote. - **City and county:** Council meeting minutes are public records. They are often a PDF posted to the city or county website within a week of the meeting. Search for “*council minutes [city name]*” to find them. Don’t just count yes/no. Look for *pattern breaks*: when did this person vote against their own party? On what issue? That tells you what they will actually fight for — and what they will trade away. ## 2. Follow the money Campaign finance is the part of politics that is mostly out in the open and mostly ignored. Three free databases cover almost every race in the country: - **FEC.gov** for federal races (U.S. House, Senate, presidential). - **OpenSecrets.org** aggregates federal data into industry totals — how much did this candidate raise from oil and gas, from teachers’ unions, from real estate, from crypto? It is the fastest way to see where the money concentrates. - **State ethics commission** for state and local races. Every state runs one. In South Carolina the relevant filings live on the state ethics commission website. Two questions to ask the data: **(1)** What share of contributions came from inside the district vs. outside? A candidate funded mostly from out-of-state donors is running on somebody else’s priorities. **(2)** Are there clusters from a single industry, law firm, or family office? Clusters reveal the network the candidate actually owes. ## 3. Watch a full debate or town hall — not just a clip Thirty-second clips on social media are edited to provoke a feeling. A two-hour debate or town hall, watched end to end, shows you something different: how the candidate handles a question they didn’t prepare for, how they react to being interrupted, whether they can name a specific bill or budget line or whether they retreat into talking points. Three signals to listen for: 1. **Specificity.** A candidate who says “we need to fix the schools” is saying nothing. A candidate who says “I want to raise the starting teacher salary in South Carolina from $X to $Y, paid for by Z” is showing their work. 2. **Trade-offs.** Anybody can promise lower taxes *and* better roads *and* more police. Real governance is choosing. Watch for whether the candidate can name something they would cut. 3. **How they treat the opponent.** Strong candidates push back on positions; weak ones attack the person. Personal attacks usually mean the policy argument isn’t there. ## 4. Check the endorsements — both sides Endorsements are useful information, but only if you read them as social networks rather than report cards. The question isn’t whether a group endorsed the candidate; the question is *which* groups did, and what those groups want. Pull the endorsement list from the candidate’s own website. Then cross-check the major endorsers: what is their stated mission, who funds them, what bills have they pushed? A police union endorsement, a teachers’ union endorsement, a chamber of commerce endorsement, and a conservation group endorsement each tell a different story about the candidate’s coalition. Also watch *missing* endorsements. If a candidate is a longtime incumbent and their own party’s local committee is silent or has endorsed somebody else, that is a serious signal. ## 5. Audit the mailers and ads against the receipts Campaign mail and TV ads contain claims. Almost none of those claims come with citations. Treat every striking claim — “*raised taxes 27 times*,” “*voted to defund the police*,” “*created 10,000 jobs*” — as a hypothesis to test, not a fact. The fastest way to test a claim: - Look for the small-print citation at the bottom of the mailer or in the ad’s closing seconds. It usually points to a single bill or a single news story. Pull that source and read it. About half the time the citation does not actually support the claim being made. - If there is no citation, treat the claim as marketing, not evidence. - Independent fact-checkers (PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, AP Fact Check) publish ratings on many high-profile ads. Searching the ad’s tagline often surfaces a check. ## 6. Check for conflicts of interest Most candidates are real people with real jobs, real businesses, and real family interests. That isn’t disqualifying — but it does shape how they’ll vote on issues that touch their own wallet. Look at three places: - **Statement of Economic Interest (SEI) or financial disclosure.** Federal candidates file with the Office of Government Ethics; state and local candidates file with the South Carolina ethics commission or county clerk. The filing lists employers, businesses owned, real estate held above a threshold, and outside income. - **Business registrations.** Search the South Carolina Secretary of State business filings for the candidate’s name as officer or registered agent. This catches LLCs that don’t always appear on the SEI. - **Court records.** Public court dockets show lawsuits the candidate is involved in — both as plaintiff and defendant. Bankruptcies, tax liens, and ongoing civil cases are public information. None of these are automatic disqualifiers. A candidate who runs a construction company and serves on a council that votes on building permits has a conflict, but the relevant question is whether they recuse themselves on the right votes. The disclosure plus the voting record together tell you the answer. ## A 30-minute version If you only have half an hour before you vote, do this: 1. Pull each candidate’s **last 10 recorded votes** on issues you care about. (5 min per candidate) 2. Look at the **top 5 contributors** on their most recent finance report. (3 min per candidate) 3. Read the **top 3 endorsements** on their own site, then Google what those groups do. (5 min per candidate) 4. Skim one fact-check on their biggest TV ad. (3 min) Thirty minutes of homework on a single race beats twelve hours of news consumption about national politics every time. The races on your local ballot — school board, county council, sheriff, judge — are the ones that touch your daily life most directly, and they are the races where 30 minutes of homework changes the most. ## What this guide is not This is a non-partisan framework. It does not tell you what to value or who to vote for. Two thoughtful voters using this checklist on the same race can land on opposite candidates, and both can be right by their own lights. The point is to vote with your eyes open, on the candidate’s actual record and actual coalition, instead of on a 15-second ad they paid a media buyer to put in front of you. ## Frequently asked questions ### What if a candidate has no voting record because they’ve never held office? Look at the equivalent: public statements made under their own name (op-eds, podcasts, professional writing), the platforms of the organizations they have led or served on, and how they’ve spent their own time and money. The absence of a voting record is itself information — first-time candidates trade experience for the question “what have you actually done with what you had?” ### How do I find unbiased sources? Primary sources first, always: the bill text, the vote, the filing, the disclosure. Secondary sources rank roughly by editorial independence — wire services (AP, Reuters), public broadcasters, and established local papers tend to be tighter than partisan blogs. Read at least two outlets that disagree with each other on a given race; if they both report the same fact, that fact is solid. ### What about judges and other technical races? For judicial races, the local bar association usually publishes ratings of judicial candidates based on temperament, experience, and ethics. For elected commissions (auditor, treasurer, soil and water conservation), look at the responsibilities of the office on the South Carolina secretary of state’s site, then evaluate which candidate’s professional background actually fits the job. **Last reviewed:** May 16, 2026 [Suggest an edit →](https://www.herecity.com/contact/?subject=evergreen-edit&post_id=4372&evergreen=how-to-evaluate-a-candidate-before-you-vote)