Polinaut: January 10, 2006 Archive

Do as I say, not as I.... say

Posted at 8:17 AM on January 10, 2006 by Bob Collins

Here's a little behind-the-scenes glimpse at organizing the Campaign 2006 section on our Web site.

One of the most popular features -- oh heck, it's the most popular feature in the history of MPR News' online efforts -- of our campaign coverage is the Select A Candidate tool.

The original idea behind Select A Candidate came years ago when voters in Minnesota tabbed a candidate for an important position in the executive branch, apparently because of her Scandanavian name. Even her political party subsequently disavowed her.

Cleary there was a disconnect between the information voters had available to them, and how much information they processed. And so the original Campaign XXXX site was born, with significant audio files, stories, and background on each candidate.

But how to get voters to the site? This being the Internet and all, we tried to make it fun. So we developed Select A Candidate, which allowed (and still allows) people to hold a mirror up to their political face, see what candidate appeared to match, and then -- hopefully -- encourage voters to end up on those individual candidate pages where solid information was waiting.

It worked. It worked great. The traffic levels indicated that people were choosing to be informed.

And now we're pulling together the next version of Select A Candidate and are at the phase where we identify the issues (at least at this point) and document the candidates' positions on those issues.

Simple, eh? I wish.

Let's take incumbents, for example. How do you document a position? Do you pay attention to what a candidate says, or how he/she votes? It's not always easy. Take the defense spending bill, which had the amendment to it to allow drilling in ANWR. Let's say one of the questions on Select A Candidate pertains to a candidate's position on ANWR? Now let's take, for example, candidate Mark Kennedy, who has made clear his opposition to ANWR, but voted for the bill. So is he against it? Or for it?

For those of you who say that Select A Candidate should indicate he is against it because he said so, how does that give a voter any sense of how that translates to the political process? Presumably, voters choose a candidate on an issue because of action, not words.

For those of you who say Select A Candidate should indicate he is for drilling in ANWR, because he voted for the bill, turn it around. Take a candidate who voted against the bill because of ANWR, and now change the question around to defense spending, that the candidate says he was actally for. Does he/she now get listed as opposing more defense spending?

In the Minnesota Legislature, a lot of votes against K-12 funding last year came from legislators who wanted more spending. Should they be listed as opposing more spending, even if the bill they were voting on called for it?

This dichotomy can work in a number of ways. We saw it in the anti-Max Cleland political ads in the Georgia Senate race when Cleland voted against a bill setting up the Department of Homeland Security because of some, he says, unacceptable amendments, and then couldn't withstand a withering barrage of political ads from Saxby Chambliss, with images of Osama bin Laden with headlines tumpeting his opposition to the bill. There's certainly debate over why Cleland lost, but little over the difficulty of saying exactly what a candidate position is.

In a way, candidates do themselves no favor in allowing unrelated amendments in legislation. On the other hand, it makes it very difficult to hold candidates accountable for their positions and their votes. This makes doing so the greatest challenge facing us.

By the way, if you'd like to work on the Select A Candidate project (helping research votes, etc.), drop me a line. No, it doesn't pay. A more informed electoral is our reward.