Winter Park Voice Partners on Upcoming Voters Guide with Local News Outlets

The Voters Guide is the latest project of the News Collaborative of Central Florida, which is endeavoring to work together to bring more people high-quality local news

July 13, 2026

Staff

The Winter Park Voice is partnering with six other local news outlets to create a voters guide for the primary election on Aug. 18 and the general election on Nov. 3.

The project is part of the News Collaborative of Central Florida, a group of independent local news organizations and aligned partners working toward a more informed and engaged Central Florida.

In addition to the Voice, other local news organizations collaborating on the voters guide are WKMG-News 6, Central Florida Public Media, Orlando Sentinel, VoxPopuli of West Orange, Oviedo Community News and the Osceola News-Gazette. The joint voters guide will appear on the websites of all the project partners and in print for those with print editions.

The Voters Guide aligns with the mission of the nonprofit Winter Park Voice, which aims to provide its readers with high-quality reporting about their local government and matters that influence life in Winter Park.

“At the Winter Park Voice, we serve an audience who cares deeply about local civic and political happenings and this collaboration will help us deliver more of the election coverage our readers deserve,” said Winter Park Voice Editor Beth Kassab. “Our regional News Collaborative is still new, and many people are still learning about it, but it’s already showing how our news organizations can combine resources in ways that we hope make a bigger impact than any one of us could make on our own.”

The news organizations collaborated to create questionnaires for candidates in federal, state, county and judicial races to answer. Questions range from asking candidates what are their top issues, how they would address affordability and even where they stand on Florida’s proposed constitutional amendment on property tax reductions.

In the most recent episode of Talking Central Florida, a podcast funded by the News Collaborative, host Steve Mort and Sentinel Executive Editor Roger Simmons discuss the Voters Guide. Pictured is Mort (right) with Donovan Myrie from WKMG News 6, from the same episode, who discussed Florida’s new approach to tax holidays and whether changes adopted by the Legislature in 2025 could have an unintended impact on hurricane preparedness. 

The goal is to give more people access to the candidates’ positions in their own words on the topics that matter most to people in Central Florida.

The city of Winter Park doesn’t have any races on the August or November ballots — those occur in March. But voters in Winter Park will play an important role in deciding races for Orange County Mayor, School Board Chair, Clerk of Court, judicial races and the Orange Soil and Water Conservation District on top of this year’s open race for the next Florida governor and other state and federal seats.

“This is the first time we have news outlets in our region cooperating to create a guide to help voters make informed choices at the polls,” Sentinel Executive Editor Roger Simmons said. “It’s really extraordinary to see these newsrooms come together to work on an important project like this.”

Candidates have already been contacted several times to respond to the questionnaire. If a candidate does not respond, it will be noted in the voters guide. The news organizations may then try to answer the questions for the candidates from information posted on campaign sites or social media.

“Of course our preference is for all candidates to answer themselves,” Simmons said, “but it may be telling for voters to see who responded and who did not.”

The goal is for the voters guide to publish by the end of July, in time for early voting and primary election day on Aug. 18.

The News Collaborative of Central Florida was a result of the Central Florida Journalism Ecosystem Summit, created in 2024 by Central Florida Public Media, Central Florida Foundation and Oviedo Community News. Collaborative members worked together last year on a project focusing on the impact of the state’s homeless camping ban.

WinterParkVoiceEditor@gmail.com