Election Day
Comments (0) Today is Election Day! However, unless you live in the states of Mississippi or Kentucky, or in one of a handful of major urban cities (like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Houston, San Francisco, or Baltimore), you probably didn’t have a whole lot of soul-searching to do in the preceding months up to this election. Fortunately for us, we have the whole next year to do just that as the Race for 2008 seems more and more like following a dramatic sports season!
Out here in Los Angeles, the media blitz about every aspect of these candidates is at a level to leave the average voter completely overwhelmed when thinking about next November. I know that for the past 8 years I’ve always wished there a Candidate vs. Issue grid. Imagine, if you will, a vertical list of major issues joined by a horizontal list of the candidates. In the middle would be a grid of each candidate’s position on each issue. Sadly, as far as I no, no chart such as this exists.
However, Minnesota Public Radio, has developed a Select-a-Candidate quiz, which asks you what your feeling is about certain issues, and how significant you feel those issues are. After answering about 10-12 questions, it gives you an index of candidates who tend to agree with you with their previously given positions. The point is not to tell you who to vote for, but “to help you think about your positions and then introduce you to the candidates”. What is very cool about this site is that as new issues are talked about among the candidates, they are subsequently added to the quiz. For example, I took this quiz about 2 months ago and unfortunately, there were zero positions on education I could choose. Now education is addressed! Finally.
Anyway, this was fairly interesting to me, especially given the fact that I’m home recovering from being ill right now, and the writers’ strike means that there’s actually nothing good on TV :(
Themocracy