Slate Cards from the Kos gang?

NOTE: This is a copy of a ‘diary’ I just posted at the Daily Kos.

Short version: does someone at the Daily Kos want to work up a system for us to enter slate cards for our home precincts, and compare them, so we can get advice on the bottom of the ballot? It should be fairly easy to set up, and it would encourage visitors to think about the important local races and ballot questions, which are the pounding heart of democracy and stuff.

Insanely long version:

I lived in California for three years or so, when the whole elections business was getting out of control. Every three or four months, there would be an election with thirty-seven things to vote for: people, bond issues, policy positions, amendments, state and city stuff. Even if you generally knew your mind, you needed to remember that ‘No on K’ was in favor of, rather than against, the ventriloquist’s dummy. The language on the ballot wasn’t usually clear.

Every political group therefore made up and distributed slate cards. The N Judah Portuguese-American Caucus would endorse a Mayoral candidate, a State Rep, and a position on most, if not all, the ballot questions. We might get half-a-dozen cards on our door in the weeks before an election (and it was always the week before an election). If we were busy, we could just line ’em up and compare them. If all the good guys agreed, we could just take their word, and if the teachers wanted a Yes on Q, and the Harvey Milk wanted a No, we could look into it further (or take the endorsement of our favorite).

When we moved to Boston, we got no slate cards, and I missed them. Even with shorter, less frequent ballots, I still wanted to compare the various endorsements of the various groups, particularly at the bottom of the ballot (what the heck is the Governor’s Council?). I know that various candidates and groups have gotten into trouble with paying for distribution of slate cards, including taking them into polling places, so perhaps they are frowned on. It seems to me that they could be really useful, and a nice central web site could make it easy to create them and compare them.

So, what about it? It would take some programming (more than I could do), but not too much. Here’s what I imagine.

After logging in to the site, you would enter your precinct (or ward, or whatever). I would, for instance, enter Virginia, Congressional District 1, State Senate 3, State House 64, James City County, Precinct Roberts C. Once the sample ballots are out for your precinct, and you’ve decided who to ‘endorse’ all the way up and down the ballot, you hit new card. The ‘card’ would have a space for the date and spaces for Pres, Gov, Rep, Sen, State Rep, State Sen, Mayor, Council/Alderman/whatever (with the possibility of more than one) candidate, School Board, Space for up to (say) 35 ballot questions, and some ‘other’ slots for localities that have lots of officials.

I could see slate cards from anybody in my precinct, of course. There could also be a list of other cards from my County, State House District, or State (useful for statewide ballot questions). There may not be any slate cards; there may be a dozen. I could check ’em out before entering mine. Once I’ve entered mine, anybody searching for my area could see them. I would be responsible for entering it all correctly; the Daily Kos shouldn’t keep track of all the elections everywhere. If I enter the wrong date for the election, or enter Mickey Mouse for President, it’s my credibility.

I would also have a space for a short explanatory note. I can imagine entering my local union’s slate card, and wanting to state that it isn’t my card but my union’s. There’s be no reason not to let people enter several, if some good-hearted person wants to enter all the slate cards they’ve found from local unions and democratic clubs, as well as their own recommendations.

Of course, that means that if you want to add a slate card, you have to make your location public, at least to the precinct level. If that’s not acceptable, I suppose it could be set up to allow people to stop at the US Congress level, and only endorse higher than that on the ballot, but it would lose the whole point of the slate card, as far as I’m concerned. Also, should the cards be visible to everybody or only to people who have registered? Does somebody want to go to the trouble of making them print all nicely nicely so I can print mine out and put copies in people’s mailboxes? I don’t know, but all that can be worked out.

The point of the whole thing is to get people from the Daily Kos (which is, of course, great, but isVery Big) back down to the bottom of the ballot. The bottom of the ballot is hard, but it’s rewarding; just ask Republicans.

Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.