Resources of the Week: Election 2006
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

Resources of the Week: Election 2006
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.
— George Bernard Shaw

Be that as it may, the Tuesday after the first Monday in November is coming up fast, and election-related information is a hot commodity. Earlier this week, we highlighted one absolutely indispensable political site, Project Vote Smart.

This amazing resource offers so much information that browsing here can be like drinking from the proverbial firehose, but if you know what you’re looking for, it will save you a lot of time hopping around the Web from site to site. Databases available here include:

• Biographical Information — “Project Vote Smart compiles biographical details and contact information for over 40,000 candidates and elected officials. We make every effort to provide these details for everyone who runs for President, Congress, Governor, and State Legislature in every state.”
• Campaign Finances — “Project Vote Smart provides detailed breakdowns of campaign finance contributions for your elected officials at the state and federal levels.”
• Issue Positions (NPAT) — “The National Political Awareness Test (NPAT) is a key component of Project Vote Smart’s Voter Self-Defense system. Major leaders of the media, major parties and Project Vote Smart repetitiously ask candidates one central question: ”Are you willing to tell citizens your positions on the issues you will most likely face on their behalf?’ The NPAT is administered to all candidates for presidential, congressional, gubernatorial, and state legislative offices.”
• Interest Group Ratings — “Despite their bias, special interest group ratings can help indicate where an incumbent has stood on a particular set of issues in the past few years. They can be especially useful when ratings by groups on all sides of an issue are compared. Web site links, if available, and descriptions of the organizations offering ratings are accessible by clicking on the name of the group.”
• Voting Records — “Project Vote Smart provides easy access to Congressional and State voting records and maintains a collection of key votes grouped by issue. Key votes typically include the initial passage of legislation and final conference report vote versions (the compromised versions of bills passed in separate House and Senate version).”
• Public Statements — “Ratings. Our researchers collect public statements for the President, Vice President, Governors, all Members of Congress, and position papers for current candidates, who submit them along with their responses to the NPAT. Congressional floor statements, press releases, editorials, letters, columns, and television show and committee hearing transcripts are added daily.”

Project Vote Smart also offers voter registration information (including a database of county election offices nationwide), state=specific information such as ballot measures and legislative leadership, RSS feeds, and a large directory of political resources “that cover all aspects of Democracy.”

One slightly annoying thing I noticed is that after the first time I took a look at information specific to Florida, I was unable to get back to introductory pages that would allow me to look at information for other states. No matter what I clicked on after my initial choice, only Florida information was displayed. Not sure if this is by design or just a technical issue of some sort. (I use Firefox on Mac OS X Tiger.)

Project Vote Smart, an all-volunteer resource, offers a toll-free Voter’s Research Hotline (1-888-VOTE-SMART or 1-888-868-3762). If politics is your thing — or if you simply appreciate this high quality resource, you can help out by becoming a member, volunteering your time, or participating in the Project Vote Smart Ambassador Program, a citizen outreach effort that involves distributing publications and/or giving presentations in your community. (I’m thinking library programming here.)
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+ One of our favorite fishing holes, the University of Michigan Library Documents Center, offers a rich collection of Election 2006 links that includes background material about elections, and information about candidates, campaign finance, policy issues, voting and election results, and academic research.
+ Real Clear Politics, another non-partisan site, culls “opinion, news, polls and analysis” from “millions of weblogs and hundreds of newspapers every day”.
+ We featured Congressional Quarterly’s 2006 Election Forecast Map as a Resource of the Week last May.
+ OpenSecrets.org, a project of the Center for Responsive Politics, focuses intently on “money in U.S. elections”.
+ DocuTicker, our sister site, continues posting a variety of full-text reports on the election and politics in general from from government agencies, NGOs, think tanks and other public interest organizations.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 12:40 pm and is filed under Resource of the Week, Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.