Decatur Vote Illinois
Feb 15, 2024: Decatur Vote is Temporarily Closed. See the announcement.

Decatur Vote

Story compiled by Reed Sutman.
  • Created
  • Updated

DecaturVote.com is a local political news website covering primarily Decatur Illinois Elections, but also providing some coverage of other elections in Macon County.

Major Updates

Major Updates regarding the business and the website.

  • Jan 13, 2023

    Website updated!

    Major update to the website with some redesigns and a new 'Story' feature.

    Learn More

  • Jul 29, 2022

    Pre-launch!

    The first version of the website is published, after about 9 months of work.

Timeline Design created by Overflow & modified by Reed Sutman. Timeline content created by Decatur Vote.

Articles

Decatur Vote is temporarily closed, and will not be covering the March 19th, 2024 Primaries. The website lists all of the local candidates, but does not list state or federal candidates, and it is not going to before March 19th. I hope to re-open Decatur Vote in a timely manner and cover the Nove...   See Article

Blog, 02-15-2024

I tried my first weekly news recap on January 20th, 2023, publishing 7 in total through March 3rd, 2023. These early recaps included some original reporting. I stopped publishing them because it was too much work & I had other priorities. Then in October or November 2023, I began reading most...   See Article

Blog, 01-16-2024

Today, I made some updates to Decatur Vote. They're not exciting, but I'd like to share for transparency's sake. Updates: Made all but two Patreon Posts public (previously, many were behind a paywall) Removed promises of Sponsor Benefits (I wasn't delivering them anyway) Added a reference page f...   See Article

Blog, 12-01-2023

Public Notice Illinois's purpose is to provide "to the public every notice that appears in an Illinois newspaper." It is free for the public to search individually, but automated scraping of the website is disallowed per their Terms of Use, which state you can "download or print in...   See Article

Opinion, 11-02-2023

Long story short, I am putting down the Dennis investigation and School District coverage to focus on website updates, 2024 election-related work, and cataloguing of local government and political groups. In June, after the Dennis Lab Schools were closed, I began covering the Decatur Public Schoo...   See Article

Blog, 10-24-2023

Free Open Source Software (FOSS) is software that can be used by the public for free. "Open Source" means the source code is also publicly available. Developers (or anyone) can view this code, report issues with it, and suggest changes to it. Decatur Vote believes in collaboration, and ...   See Article

Blog, 05-16-2023

Decatur Vote is funded by sponsorships and my own money. I do not run ads. I do not use paywalls. Decatur Vote is Temporarily Closed. See the announcement I've had a total of 4 sponsors since launch in July 2022, which is greatly appreciated. As of December 1, 2023, Decatur Vote has cost me more ...   See Article

Blog, 04-11-2023

About Decatur Vote Decatur Vote is a locally-minded news organization, focused on elections, government, local issues, civic and charitable organizations, and local leaders. We do investigative journalism, organize and catalogue local information, encourage local civic engagement, and hold leader...   See Article

Blog, 04-11-2023

I've covered two elections for Decatur Vote. DV has had 59 new page likes on Facebook since January 3rd, bringing us to 111 followers. We have two monthly patrons at $10 per month, which is about $17.00 per month revenue after Patreon fees. We thoroughly covered the 2023 Decatur election, and did...   See Article

Blog, 04-04-2023

This week we updated several candidate platforms, published endorsements from three organizations, made progress on our comprehensive Voter's Guide, and a few other minor things. This is the weekly update from Decatur Vote, which you'll get if you sign up for emails at the bottom of this page. We...   See Article

Meta Report, 03-24-2023

DecaturVote.com is a local political news website covering primarily Decatur Illinois Elections, but also providing some coverage of other elections in Macon County.   See Article

Blog, 01-13-2023

Decatur Vote launched in July 2022 after 9 months of development. I conducted 10 interviews and researched an additional 3 candidates online for 2022. I got off-track from elections a couple times & did not work as efficiently as I hoped. Roughly 17 local candidates were not reported on. I un...   See Article

Blog, 11-17-2022

DecaturVote.com is a for-purpose business legally organized for-profit. I want to bring local voter information to the forefront, making it accessible & easy to follow. I've been working toward this on and off for a few years and have dedicated my full-time work to this since November 2021. V...   See Article

Blog, 06-14-2022

Tidbits

I've made major updates to the website! The home page has been re-organized, the ugly bar at the bottom is removed, and most exciting is the new 'Stories' feature! You can see the screenshot above showing a timeline of highlights regarding the 2023 Election. Those 'Story' pages are a collection o...   See Tidbit

01-13-2023

Sources