This bothered me. Yes, I know the never ending candidates should not answer specific questions because it could be used against them blah blah blah – If you want to know more information you are supposed to spend hours sifting thru vote records for candidates that have voting records. Which if anyone has actually tried to get information on voting records that’s much easier said than done. Or rely strictly on candidates campaign sites and that's not an unbiased source of information either. If your candidate does not have a voting record then of course you have nothing to use to compare them against an incumbent in an easy to use format. Which is one of the many reasons Project Vote Smart could be useful if all candidates would care enough about those in the public who want information. Curiosity then hit me and I wondered who in my area that was included in Project Vote Smart participated?
So, I entered my zip code…the results for the current candidates might surprise you:
Senator Michael 'Mike' DeWine
Representative Sherrod C. Brown
Representative Marcy Kaptur
Senator Teresa M. Fedor
Caron Van Deventer
Representative Peter Ujvagi
Ernie Berry
J. Kenneth Blackwell
Representative Ted Strickland
All have a variation of this message:
REPEATEDLY REFUSED TO PROVIDE ANY RESPONSES TO CITIZENS ON ISSUES THROUGH THE 2006 NATIONAL POLITICAL AWARENESS TEST WHEN ASKED TO DO SO BY
Key national leaders of both major parties including: John McCain, Republican; Senator Geraldine Ferraro, Former Democratic Congresswoman; Michael Dukakis, Former Democratic Governor; Bill Frenzel, Former Republican Congressman; and Richard Kimball, Project Vote Smart President
News organizations also urged candidates to provide their responses on the issues through the 2006 National Political Awareness Test.
One candidate…yes One that was asked to do the NPAT did so for my zip code:
Bradley S. Leavitt.
So kudos to Bradley Leavitt who is running against Representative Marcy Kaptur for being open enough to provide voters of our area information on where he stands on key issues.
If you want to check out candidates in your zip code - visit Project Vote Smart.
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6 comments:
It's the numbers of those who are not participating that bothered me the most. We have all this awesome technology to help discover information yet the never ending making information harder to get.
Lisa - having been asked to answer some of those surveys I can tell you that they're not always good questions...that is, they sometimes have questions designed to elicit a specific answer.
I'm not defending these particular candidates, but before getting too upset with those who wouldn't complete the survey, it'd be nice to actually see the survey first.
link to candidate forms. A candidate does not have to answer questions on all categories from my understanding of it. I realize, Maggie that if a majority of candidates do not participate it almost creates a disadvantage for those who do. That's unfortunate as voters don't get the chance to compare/contrast.
Lisa - pretty basic survey...most of the options were pretty inclusive...I only saw a couple which seemed to be lacking and, even then, there was a spot for "other."
But most candidates will receive advice from consultants, parties, etc...not to fill out such forms. When you find yourself 'defending' your statements, you're losing (at least - that's how the advice goes...)
But you could also turn your opponent's failure to answer into a plus...
Maggie, thanks for looking at it, I thought it was pretty basic too.
Until more choose to participate this "tool" will remain pretty much useless.
As Kate suggests, critical evaluation by the voters is an effective method.
Let's hope more voters do this.
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