Compare Candidates on the Issues: New Political Site and Concept

Here’s what could end up being a niftly little online voting guide. Unlike most of them, you can compare two candidates for the same office on the issues and grade them. The interesting factor is that you don’t get to see which candidate you are choosing until after you’ve selected the response you most like.

Vote Media’s whatsyourvote.org was just launched, so they don’t have many candidates in the system, yet. I’ve noticed that most of the ones in the system, so far, are Libertarians.

I’m in contact with the CEO of Vote Media. It will prove interesting to learn if Americans actually vote for candidates even when they disagree with their positions on the important issues of the day. Here’s a clip from their promotional e-mail:

Our national public relations efforts are launching in August. We invite you to input your position on up to 15 issues by August 4th to secure the benefits of early PR. There is no cost to post your issues on whatsyourvote.org.

How it works

An individual username and password* has been created for every candidate. If you have not already received your username and password, please contact us at info@whatsyourvote.org.

Once you have your login credentials, visit whatsyourvote.org and click on Candidate Login.

This secure access provides links prompting candidates to easily

fill out issue perspectives
edit profile
upload photo, banner, and video links
view polling charts (if subscribed)**
Remember, candidates post their issue perspectives and photo for free.

Your name is already on our site. When interested voters click on your name they are eager to get your response to their selected issues. Until you post your perspectives “Candidate has not responded” will appear opposite your opponent’s perspectives.

I’d recommend that LP candidates fill our the questionnaire. Everyone else, enjoy!

posted Aug 6th, 2006 by Stephen Gordon
  • DP

    And of course, noone from Indiana has participated yet. Has anyone else seen a response from their respective state? I’d assume that at least the wanna-bes would take the time to respond to it.

    I’ll e-mail all the candidates here in Indiana in the vain hope that they read them. Also, I noticed that they have no banner as of yet for other websites. Looks like my Sunday morning is going to be filled with sending messages….

  • disinter

    I can’t figure out how a condidate would fill out the questionaire…. Where is it?

  • Stephen Gordon

    Mike,

    They’ve contacted as many candidates as they could. If your favorite candidate wasn’t contacted, simply use the info@ e-mail addy.

  • http://www.judybaker.us Judy Baker

    Judy Baker candidate for Texas lt. Governor

    The quality of our public schools has declined with increased state control of money and policies for our local school systems. Families should have the option to let their children attend schools that provide the type of environment and education that fits their needs.
    As Lt. Governor, Judy will promote legislation to return the right to make these decisions to individual citizens.

    We are releasing violent offenders prematurely to make room for peaceful drug users, and the drug problem will keep getting worse under our current drug policies.

    As Lt. Governor, Judy will promote legislation to focus law enforcement resources on violent crimes.

    The Supreme Court has ruled that eminent domain can include taking individuals’ property for private use, distorting the Constitution’s “public use” limitations on eminent domain.

    As Lt. Governor, Judy will promote legislation that protects the property rights of all Texans.

  • Julian

    I don’t see anyone from Colorado participating.

  • http://www.mikekole.com Mike Kole

    DP- I would love to respond and post my positions, but alas, I am a candidate for statewide office (Secretary of State) and per the site:

    “This site is structured as a vehicle for presenting the opinions of all candidates for Governor, U.S. Senate, and U.S. Congress in the 2006 election.”

    Indiana does not have a candidate for Governor. We have one candidate for US Senate (the Democrats can’t say this!) and three candidates for US House.

    Of course, DP, you might make yourself most useful in the future and *be* one of our candidates! :-)

  • http://www.mikekole.com Mike Kole

    What I should have said is that in the 2006 cycle in Indiana, governor is not on the ballot. I don’t want to give the impression that we wouldn’t be running a candidate for governor if it were on the ballot. Sorry!

  • http://garthwaite.org Dan Garthwaited

    Flash 8 == site inoperable for linux

    Fired an email to simply state that Flash 8 doesn’t render on anything but fully up to date Windows or Apple machines.

    I truly hope it’s a matter of ‘save as -> flash 7′. This site has the potential of being a great compliment to the world’s smallest political quiz.

    In fact, I’d love to see our representatives results of taking the W.S.P.Q.

  • http://whatsyourvote.org Mary Gillis

    Thanks for checking out whatsyourvote.org. We are doing our best to get candidates to participate. Anything you can do to encourage candidates who have not responded to get on board and input their perspectives would be appreciated. We will add direct email links to most of the candidates on the site soon to assist your effort to contact them. We have created an extremely cool interface that makes it very easy for them to respond. We believe that voters want to know how candidates stand on the issues. We have built it, will they come?

    whatsyourvote.org now works with Linux.