Resources

Note: MITvote2017 does not endorse any candidate, nor does it take responsibility for any content hosted on external webpages.

With the exception of the Harvard union voter guide, which contains information about Cambridge and Somerville candidates, all resources below are for the Cambridge City Council election.

Work by MIT Groups

• We put together this voter guide presentation, with information on how to vote and a brief biographical summary of each candidate!
• The Graduate Student Council put together a candidate info sheet by looking for candidate positions on issues relevant to graduate students.
• The Undergraduate Association Committee on Sustainability put together a summary of candidates’ positions and accomplishments on sustainability issues.
• MIT Democrats endorsed Nadya Okamoto, Sam Gebru, and Vatsady Sivongxay.
• Fossil Free MIT, which advocated for MIT to divest from fossil fuels, has endorsed Quinton Zondervan.

Candidate Aggregators

These sites have information on most candidates, in some kind of systematic format.

• Cambridge Council Candidates allows you to quickly see, for each candidate, who they are endorsed by, what their financial record is, links to their responses to various questionnaires, and (for many) video interviews. (Direct link to YouTube playlist). The site allows you to take notes on each candidate and save your own rankings.
• The Cambridge Civic Journal has a list of candidates for both City Council and School Committee, with a page for each one that often includes a fairly detailed platform.
• Cambridge Community Television’s elections page has a video profile of most candidates as well as video footage of major candidate forums. (Direct link to Youtube playlist)
• Backyard Cambridge, a podcast on the Cambridge election intended for first-time voters, has short audio interviews with most candidates. Their six episodes form less than 3 hours of listening total.
• The Harvard Crimson conducted interviews with most candidates.

Non-MIT Interest Groups

• A Better Cambridge is a YIMBY group which advocates primarily for more and denser housing. They endorsed Marc McGovern, Denise Simmons, Adriane Musgrave, Sean Tierney, Alanna Mallon, and Sam Gebru, and also tiered many of the remaining candidates as “Positive”, “Neutral”, or “Negative”. Questionnaire responses, endorsement press release.
• The Cambridge Residents’ Alliance is an association of mostly long-time Cambridge residents. They endorsed Dennis Carlone, Jan Devereux, Sumbul Siddiqui, Vatsady Sivongxay, and Quinton Zondervan. Partial questionnaire responses, endorsement press release.
• Our Revolution Cambridge is the local chapter of a movement springing from Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. They endorsed the same candidates as the Cambridge Residents’ Alliance, plus Jeff Santos. Questionnaire results (warning: not neatly organized)
• The Massachusetts Vision Zero Coalition is a coalition of pedestrian and bicycle advocates dedicated to reducing traffic fatalities and injuries. Questionnaire responses.
• Cambridge Bicycle Safety is a bicycle safety advocacy group. Candidates’ responses to their platform calling for more pop-up and permanent protected bike lanes.

Other Information

• The Harvard Graduate Student Union’s voter guide
• Cambridge Town Hall, a Facebook group with discussions between City Council candidates and Cambridge residents. It is beginning to also have video interviews with candidates (two as of November 1st).
• The political notes section of Cambridge Day, a local newspaper. Of particular note: a compilation by Cambridge Day’s Marc Levy of ideas coming out of the campaign and who proposed them.
• The Cambridge Chronicle, another local newspaper.
• cambridge.vote has some facts about some issues, although not much candidate information.