About the 2024 KC Voter Guide

The 2024 KC Voter Guide is a collaboration between multiple newsrooms and nonprofit media organizations in the Kansas City metro area: The Beacon, Kansas City PBS/Flatland, KCUR, Missouri Business Alert, Startland News and The Kansas City Star, along with American Public Square, RevEd and the Latino Education Collaborative.

Support for the 2024 KC Voter Guide comes from the Kauffman Foundation, the Health Forward Foundation and other donors.

This effort brought together dozens of reporters and editors to provide a comprehensive look at the 2024 elections, in concise, easy-to-understand language. Our guide covers more than 100 races across five counties in the Kansas City region, on both sides of the state line.

We’re publishing this voter guide in plenty of time for your voice to be heard in the August 6 primaries. After that, we’ll update this site with information about the general elections on Nov. 5.

Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to get registered, head to the polls, and cast an informed vote for the candidates who represent your values.

The Kansas City area, and our democracy, will be better for it.

Got questions or corrections about this project? Are you an organization that wants to get involved? Contact us.

What went into this project

Many of our newsrooms have previously published voter guides on their own. But we know that 2024 is an especially big election year — in addition to the U.S. presidential election, the entire Kansas Legislature is on the ballot, as is much of the Missouri General Assembly.

While most voters know who’s running for president, far fewer people know who represents them in the state capital or on their city councils and commissions. And yet those are offices where our neighbors make the decisions that affect our communities and day-to-day lives.

Properly covering all the races on the ballot — not just the high-profile ones — and distributing that information requires more resources than any one Kansas City newsroom has on its own. So why not work together?

In January 2024, non-profit news organizations in the KC Media Collective met with editors at The Kansas City Star, who enthusiastically joined the effort.

We all agreed that the 2024 KC Voter Guide would be free to all readers — nothing behind a paywall.

How we reported these guides

The KC Media Collective and Kansas City Star compiled all the 2024 primary races in Clay, Jackson, Johnson, Platte, and Wyandotte counties.

Reporters at our newsrooms used a variety of methods to concisely and accurately summarize local, statewide and federal races.

Whenever possible, reporters interviewed candidates directly. In some cases, candidates did not respond to our attempts to reach them or had minimal information available online or elsewhere. We have made note of this in their candidate profiles.

We reviewed the legislative records of incumbents, including bills they have sponsored and votes they have taken.

For all candidates, reporters summarized their stated policy positions — gathered from interviews, websites, social media feeds, press releases and other news articles.

Each contest guide has been reviewed multiple times by editors.

Sections of the election guide and resources have also been translated into Spanish, with the assistance of our partner organization RevEd and other translators.

Where can I access this voter guide?

Our comprehensive guides on the 2024 primary elections have now published — in English and Spanish — on this website. You can find all the Missouri races here, and the Kansas races here.

The information about candidates and races will live on this website through the primary election in August. After that, we will update the guides to reflect the general election contests, so there’s enough time to read up before November.

We also plan to conduct outreach and engagement efforts to help get this information out to everyone who needs it.

How can I support the voter guide effort?

Each organization is contributing their staff, time and resources to make the 2024 KC Voter Guide free and accessible to all.

If you would like to support this project, you can donate here.