Community members packed into a cozy room, tucked into the corner of Contentment Brewing in Modesto, for a night of election trivia and community discussion on the primary election.
Community members quickly packed the room and engaged in buzzing conversations before the event started.
The VotingMatters event was hosted by CalMatters in partnership with The Modesto Focus. CalMatters is a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization founded in 2015, that focuses on California stories, politics and leaders.
VotingMatters is a grassroots event series that takes place across California, with the goal of educating and informing Californians on the importance of voting. This May, CalMatters brought their 2026 voter guide to the Central Valley, focusing on the 2026 California Primary Election.
Each chair in the room had a physical 2026 Voter Guide placed on top, the headline reading “Choose your next governor” with the faces of the top eight leading candidates scattered across. The voter guide featured a quiz, asking questions on how the next governor should handle issues from homelessness to artificial intelligence. At the end of the quiz guests were able to tally up their score to see which leading candidate their views most aligned with.
As guests grabbed their seats and settled in, editor of The Modesto Focus, Marijke Rowland welcomed and introduced guests to the event. She then gave Dan Hu, Director of Partnerships at CalMatters, the stage. Hu gave guests the rundown on VotingMatters and the discussions that would take place.
Garth Stapley, The Modesto Focus Accountability Reporter introduced himself and gave a short slideshow on the civic engagement The Modesto Focus has fostered.
The event moved on to a game of election trivia to engage the crowd, hosted by Hu and Stapley. Trivia topics included statewide and local election focused questions. The audience members that were the first to answer questions correctly received a prize from either CalMatters or The Modesto Focus.
Following the game of election trivia, Hu gave a presentation on how to navigate the CalMatters website and answered the audience’s questions. The website features multiple resources, including a section where you can input your address to find out what district you’re in.
As well as a feature with a question and answer (Q&A) section with the top eight leading governor candidates. In this section CalMatters recorded the candidates answers to several questions so voters can better understand their stance on issues.
Hu played these interview clips from each candidate, to the question “What’s the single biggest thing you’d do to make California more affordable?”
The audience was silent as they listened to each candidate’s answer and after their stance was made clear, Hu urged the audience to turn to their neighbors and discuss who had the most compelling argument and why. The room immediately filled with conversation, each guest engaging in conversation with their neighbors.
Access to reliable information during election season remains a barrier some voters face.
“One of the challenges is not having enough of the right information. So they need a place to go to learn about the issues and about the candidates. That’s one thing we offer them at The Modesto Focus, we do debates and we pull the candidates together and have them talk about issues,” said Stapley.
The event brought out many community members from Modesto and around the Central Valley, many of whom consider this 2026 election primary crucial.
Kathy Sniffen (Modesto resident and registered voter) shared her insight on how important this primary election is to her.
“I think this is a really important primary that we’re having and there’s so many people on the ballot. We need to have a good choice in the general election, it was really important to me to make sure I voted for a candidate who was going to give us a good choice,” Sniffen said.
Community partnerships are an important part of CalMatters and their VotingMatters initiative. Hu works with 300 publications across California, as well as libraries, churches, schools and nonprofits.
“We saw at the start how many people showed up because of CalMatters and because of Modesto Focus. So CalMatters is a very respected publication at the state level, but we sort of exist online and we don’t have a community anywhere in the state. People love us but don’t actually know us. So wherever we go in the state we need to work with local partners,” Hu said.
