Profiles

One of the problems I have always faced, going into an election, is figuring out who to vote for. Sometimes it's easy; if there's a Libertarian running, he or she gets my vote. But if not, I have to try and synthesize what I have read and researched on each candidate, where they stand on the issues, judge whether they will keep their word if elected, and so on. And in many cases, there's just not much information available -- who publishes information about the local race for dogcatcher?

What about what the major candidates have said in the past -- have they changed their positions after being elected? Or maybe said things that they would rather disown when actually facing an election? To some degree, honest journalists seek to provide that sort of analysis. But their political views rarely match mine, most people don't exactly build a scrapbook of analysis to review when deciding who to vote for, and frankly, most "journalists" these days seem more interested in rewriting an AP article with some local quotes for color than actually doing thoughtful research.

But what if I could actually go back over all the articles written about a candidate in the past -- perhaps along with some thoughtful analysis and commentary? That would help immensely in deciding who to vote for, simply by providing all the information in one place for each candidate in each race. And thus was born what I call The Political Profile Project.

Beginning with the 2004 Presidential Election, I have decided to collect all of the articles I can about each of the candidates. Each will get their own category within the triggerfinger weblog. I will post the articles I find to those categories in order to aid others in reviewing the candidates and making their decisions.

And here's where you can help. There are far too many candidates and races for me to cover myself, even if the Presidential race is the only one really active at the moment. The others will continue to grow in prominence and coverage as we move closer and closer to the 2004 election. And I will need your help to keep up with as much of the coverage as I can.

If you are interested in politics and plan to follow the elections in your state, please register on this site in order to gain access to the weblog, and send me mail with the candidates you intend to cover, along with the positions they are running for, and a brief description or biography. I will create a category for each candidate and then you can start posting links. Consider it doing your bit for informed democracy in our great republic.