Sometimes in spite of our best efforts, a candidate will not respond to the survey. If you are doing original reporting you can certainly go in and directly enter responses to each topic.

If instead you want them to have no response shown, but want a note explaining the situation to your audience, you can set a default “no response placeholder” for an election. This text will be automatically shown for any empty candidate responses (both for candidates who didn’t respond at all, or for individual topics a candidate may have skipped).

To set a placeholder, go into settings for the election (at the upper right of the main election screen).

Enter the text you want to be shown for blank responses in the “no response placeholder” field.

You can format the response as usual, and even insert links. For example, it might be helpful to link to additional details of how you compiled the guide and the opportunities offered to all the candidates to respond.