Just a note, as previously written on Twitter and this blog: the platform is frozen until early July, likely some time late in the first week of July.

All candidates can still update their elaborations on issues during this code freeze via the private link sent to their official campaign email address. (Search for messages from alignvote[at]gmail.com on your official campaign email address, and be sure to include the spam folder.)

Those candidates who have not yet confirmed or established their stances on Alignvote may still do so, and they go live once the candidate (and not we) submit their answers.

We encourage them to get their stances and voices in front of voters, and we encourage voters to be kind to busy candidates and not immediately jump to conclusions that their lack of participation yet is somehow disqualifying. Alignvote is new; they were only emailed access to their dashboard last week. Some of us can take a week or two to get back to an email, and these candidates are inundated with questionnaire requests. Voters can however gently encourage them (face to face or via email) to complete their stances, so that voters can be better informed.

Note that the candidate dashboard also allows the candidates/campaigns to craft one good and fair and of-interest-to-voters in the district question for consideration in a potential July round of new questions.

At this writing, Alignvote is approaching 4,000 voter-candidate search rankings, and is being shared more and more by Seattle voters. Some past district-level elections have been decided by fewer than 50 votes. We expect TV coverage next week, which will increase its visibility substantially.

There are many imperfections in this tool, and we look forward to constructive criticism with suggestions on making this tool better for voters and candidates alike.