This from Richard Kimball the founder of Project Vote Smart which gathers the voting records and opinions of candidates for almost all levels of government. The reasons that candidates give for their reluctance seems to justify a move towards public financing of campaigns along with a requirement to declare positions on issues relevant to the voters and perhaps some mandated debates to “out” the candidates for the few of us who would like to know that they think.
The Project conducted a ten-year study of every candidate for state legislature, governor, congress and the presidency to track their decreasing willingness to provide citizens with specific positions on the voter’s concerns. Or in other words: Issues that their pollster did not stamp SAFE!
Using key leaders of both parties from the Project’s Board and over 100 major daily newspapers we bombarded each candidate with requests for information on issues. The percentage of candidates willing to provide information dropped from a high of 72% in 1996 to a low of 48% in 2006.
You can watch your favorite candidates performance on this years test on this web site. Just look at the Political Courage Test. Three things became apparent over the course of the test:
1. The percentage of democrats and republicans agreeing to answer questions never varied more than a few percentage points.
2. The more money a candidate raised, the more ability they had to control their campaign message the less likely they were to provide citizens with issue position specifics.
3. The basic reason a candidate would refuse to provide such information was to avoid opposition research.Here is tiny sample of the reasons they will not provide this basic information every citizen has a right to:
* “Our campaign only filled out issue questionnaires if they came with a campaign donation.” – NC Democrat
* “My consultant asked me why I would want to provide the Project with issues positions that my opponent would see.” – WA Democrat
* “Americans aren’t asking for more information from candidates, they’re asking for less. They don’t want to be troubled.” WA Republican Chairman
* “It is not our job to educate. It is our job to win!” – AZ Democratic National Committee
Born 1950, Married, Living in Austin Texas, Semi
Retired Small Business owner and investor. My political interest
evolved out of his business experience that the best decisions come out of an objective gathering of information and a pragmatic consideration of costs and benefits. I am interested in promoting Centrist candidates and Policies. My posts are mostly about people and policies that I believe are part of the solution rather the problem.