Local Elections Project

Ok, so this may be a wishful thinking section of the site, since it will depend in large part on cooperation (and work) from local town clerks and volunteers.

I hate when I go to vote that there are people running for office I've never heard of (especially since 'abstain' isn't a choice on the ballot, and writing it in makes tons of work for the people tabulating the votes). It's not really anybody's fault - how much money or time do people running for the smaller or essentially volunteer offices have to campaign, and how much news coverage will they get? But hey, those people will sit on the town planning committee, or the school committee, or the whatever committee, and the decisions they make will impact the town.

I don't want to end up voting by default for the person whose name sounds the nicest, or who I vaguely remember reading something about (but absolutely can't remember what their position was). And I'm acutely aware that, for instance, my vote (and the votes of people like me) for a school committee member (when I have no children and know nothing about that person) will affect the thousands of parents in town who have done research and do know who they think is the best person for that office.

So, I'm hoping this section will turn into an area where town clerks can provide ballots ahead of the actual voting day, and where people who are running can submit a form that lets them post their qualifications and why you should vote for them, and where we can all read it so on election day we aren't completely blind.

Lots of work... I have to somehow get the information from the town clerk (or better yet, get them to post it themselves, which will mean creating a CMS for each town to use) . Before that, I have to find out who the person in each town is I should contact (probably the town clerk, but maybe not, and what is their contact info anyway?). Also along the way I have to get contact info from the people running so I can let them know they can give me info to post. Then I have to create the pages for each town and put everything up. Actually not a lot of work, more like ten tons of it, especially since ballots aren't usually finalized until pretty close to the actual election.

Any volunteers? I could really use people to act as liaisons within each town to at least do the initial legwork of speaking with the proper town officials and getting contact info (preferably email addresses) of whoever would have ballot and candidate contact info and whether or not they would be willing to provide it for this website. Then maybe someone from a different town (so we could minimize conflict of interest issues) who would be willing to contact candidates, gather the information and maybe even create the relevant page. So basically, if you agreed to be the liaison for Northampton/Florence, I might later ask you if you could work on the Amherst section. Something like that, anyway.

If you're interested in this project, comment in the blog. Even if you can't commit to putting time into it, I would be interested in your thoughts, suggestions for what kind of information a candidate submission form might include, etc.