Ralph Nader said that it would “encourage a form of aliteracy even
among those who seek honest information.” Many candidates, including
the Near West Side’s extremely popular representative to the U.S.
Congress, refuse to fully participate in it. It employs some of the same
off-putting political rhetoric that it purports to replace.
And yet, Project Vote Smart may be the best hope for an educated
electorate.
Project Vote Smart is a bi-partisan initiative founded and promoted
by such dissimilar politicians as Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, George
McGovern and Barry Goldwater, Geraldine Ferraro and Mark Hatfield. Its
goal is fairly simple: to supply voters with concise information in a standardized
format, so that when ballots are cast, they are based upon knowledge
rather than on intuition, random selection, or the lilting cadence of
the candidate’s name. Currently, Project Vote Smart is tracking more
than 40,000 candidates in races ranging from local to national. Issues
such as the upcoming Ballot Measure 1 (drug treatment rather than jail
time) are also catalogued, with pro and con arguments presented.
Critics object to the project as over-simplification of complex
issues, and there are surely some grounds for this. The National
Political Awareness Test (NPAT) is Project Vote Smart’s standard
instrument for gathering data on candidates’ positions on key issues.
Lauded for allowing candidates “no wiggle-room,” the NPAT also doesn’t
allow for a great deal of elaboration or explanation.
Of course, in that respect, it’s not unlike most job interviews. In
a given election, a voter may find more than a score of candidates for
various offices on the ballot, in addition to any number of issues. Most
people enter the voting booth with little or no background on even half
of those candidates and issues. This is roughly approximate to offering
an important job to someone without so much as checking out his resume.
Now, the good human resources professional will go the extra mile and
ask the sort of probing, open-ended questions Nader sees as essential.
But surely even the resume-only version of applicant screening is better
than no screening at all, or - heaven forbid - offering the job to a
candidate merely because she was, say, a well-known entertainer or the
daughter of a previously-elected official.
Ten years after its founding, Project Vote Smart is still being
fleshed out. Local races, predictably, have hit-or-miss coverage. Data
compilers damage the project’s credibility by inserting such judgmental
language as “[this candidate refused] to do the right and honorable
thing” (i.e., submitting an NPAT). But there is a surprising amount of
good, solid information here. In the interim between now and the day of
voters’ nirvana, when all citizens who enjoy suffrage will enter the
voting booth thoroughly briefed on all candidates and issues, Project
Vote Smart will at least provide a decent starting point for educating
voters to become better comparison shoppers.
You can pick up a 2002 Voter’s Self-Defense Manual at most local
libraries. But this guide is somewhat limited in its scope - it really
only covers the U.S. Congress. To get the more substantial goods,
including what’s available on local elections, you’ll need to visit the
website:
www.vote-smart.org