At Cardinal News, every day our reporters are on the ground (and sometimes underground) to understand what local governments in Southwest and Southside Virginia are doing — for better or worse — that affect our neighbors.
So, when it comes to local elections, we strive to ask the questions that will help you make an informed decision. Thus, the Cardinal News Voter Guide was born, including the easy-to-navigate features, thanks to the Knight Election Center and a grant from Microsoft (read more about how Cardinal News is funded).
Starting in 2025, we expanded our Voter Guide to all 133 counties and cities across Virginia because it’s not just our region that suffers from a lack of reliable, verified information about candidates.
But even then, our eyes and ears aren’t everywhere, and issues affect people differently.
That’s why we asked for your input on how we shape our election reporting and Voter Guide.
More than 200 of you from 59 Virginia localities answered the call and shared your hopes, frustrations and priorities with local government and the media reporting that surrounds elections.
Below is a summary of what we heard and what we plan to do as a result.
What you told us
Safeguarding democracy and elections, healthcare and data centers top concerns
Respondents’ most cited priority was enforcing the Constitution, especially citizen rights and checks and balances on federal power. This included pleas to ensure that people who are allowed to vote are not hindered and that any fraudulent activity is stopped.
Close behind were concerns about healthcare — from insurance costs to quality of care to protecting Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security benefits. This often was tied to overall concerns for affordability and economic stability.
Many respondents also said that data centers should be stopped or at least more closely regulated. These concerns were often tied to harm to water resources or creating more sustainable energy sources.
K-12 education was also a priority, especially increasing funding and quality of education.
Local election news should provide practical, diverse views on issues
To help us get a sense of people’s various motivations, we asked, “What are you looking for when it comes to local election news?” with these options:
Others shared that they value equal coverage of independent candidates, avoiding political drama in news coverage, exposing corruption, and understanding where local candidates stand on state and national issues.
Most felt that local political news leaves them informed
We asked “How does local political news typically make you feel?” and learned that most respondents felt informed. But in the “other” category feelings of anger, cynicism, disgust and the nagging feeling that they’re being lied to emerge.
How your input informed what we do next
Based on what we heard, here are a few steps we have taken or plan to take:
- Your concerns about your local government informed the questions we posed to candidates. You can see if candidates have responded to our questions yet by going to our Voter Guide, scrolling down to “elections by locality” and clicking on your county or city.
- Cardinal News founding editor Dwayne Yancey combed through the questions people had about the election process and the Virginia constitutional amendments on the ballot and plans to write a series of columns answering them.
- We published an in-depth explanation of the Virginia Constitutional amendments on the ballot. It included the exact language of what you’ll see in the voting booth and linked to the full language of what the state constitution would actually say here, here and here.
These are just some of the ways that we strive to keep community concerns and input at the center of our reporting. We invite you to follow along by signing up for occasional text alerts on election-related coverage in your area.
