In 2019, the MSU Libraries funded a pilot grant to archive the websites of local elections. Using a service called Archive-It, we began preserving websites for the 2018 and 2019 election cycle for the Greater Lansing area, with limited coverage of Flint and Detroit. While there are many formal efforts and mandates to preserve national and established statewide governmental records, local elections are extremely ephemeral but can provide important useful information.
This web archive is not a comprehensive collection for all candidates and ballot measures, as having a web site is not required for a campaign. Additionally, at the time of the web crawls, some candidate and ballot websites were no longer active and thus could not be preserved.
We continue to capture and preserve Ingham County election websites for primary and general elections.
Just as we have archives and museums to preserve our history, important history is made and documented on the web. Just as easily as it is created and shared, it can also be altered or completely deleted. The Internet Archive is one of a handful of organizations that take snapshots of websites called "crawls." If you have a URL, you can search the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to see how a website looked years ago and to see how it has evolved over time.
If you have questions, comments, or feedback about this project and the archived links, please feel free to send them to Julia Ezzo at julia@msu.edu.