With days left before Election Day, it is time to figure out how you will vote. Voter guides are one way that political groups can help you with this decision. Some are very informative. Most are not. All of them are biased, some more so than others. Here is a run-down of voter guides aimed at evangelicals and other religious voters this election season.

Guides for Red vs. Blue Voters

The goal of most voter guides is to simplify the election into two stark choices. Many groups cannot legally endorse candidates, but they can “educate” voters by telling them how the candidates stand on key issues. On one side of the guide is the good guy. On the other is the bad guy. And if you support the group issuing this type of voter guide, this is a very helpful tool as you decide for whom to vote.

Ralph Reed’s Faith & Family Coalition, Gary Bauer’s American Values, and Family Research Councileach offer social conservatives a flyer outlining how Barack Obama and Mitt Romney differ on the issues (spoiler alert: Obama and these groups apparently do not agree on anything). These guides cover the expected social issues like abortion, marriage, and gay rights. They also include economic and fiscal issues including the estate tax, “Cap and Trade Energy Taxes,” and the Keystone pipeline…..

Voter Guides That Don’t Pick Sides

The trouble with these types of “voting for dummies” guides is not that they are too simplistic (they are) or that they use slanted language (they do)—a guide, after all, is supposed to tell you what to do.

Sojourners’ voter guide is long on issues and values and short on candidate positions. The Sojourners “Endorsement for President” is a statement that they won’t endorse a candidate, and their “voter guide” doesn’t provide any information on candidates. It is more like a party platform than a guide for voters.

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[Editor’s note: Some of the original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid, so the links have been removed.]