Good Citizens (very long.)

[Ysobelle at aol_com]

On 11/5/02 6:37 PM, quoth the effervescent dustyvolume at yahoo_com at 
dustyvolume at yahoo_com:

>
>> what's the worst part is, i have NO idea what i would be voting for.  
>
>Jess, that's not the worst part--the worst part is actually researching the
>candidates and finding that when you acutally cast your vote, you're 
>saying yes
>to the lesser of the two money-grabbing, mud-slinging, selfish, elitist, good
>for nothings, except what's in their own best interest, pigs.  
>
>Most elections, I'd rather be ignorant to the facts, than knowingly 
>helping one
>of these schmucks into office.
>
>I was in line today to vote, and I was the only person under 55 in the whole
>place, and I felt utterly disconnected from the whole political participation
>scenario.  I asked myself 'what am I doing here?'  I would have bolted for 
>the
>door if not for all the time it would have cost me and I was already running
>late.  
>
>Hey, I don't sound bitter do I?
>
>If not, I can always try harder.
>
>Mark ;)



Well, having been a little more involved in the the elections than most 
of my acquaintance, I actually-- and I'm astonished to say this-- have to 
disagree. There ARE good men and women out there, and some of them 
actually got elected last night.

I left work at 10 Monday night. Our team was watching ten markets, and I 
had two of them: South Dakota and Iowa. We worked with one television 
station in each market and have been studying how to make their websites 
and broadcasts more effective at getting information out in way that will 
engage voters. Go take a look-- www.KELOland.com and 
www.TheIowaChannel.com-- and tell me how you think we all collectively 
did. At any rate, I did hours of screen captures to look at our sites and 
our competitors' now, two-plus months after we began, to be able to 
compare them. 

I was back again Tuesday morning, just before noon. We spent the day 
going over last-minute plans for watching and capturing our websites, 
seeing who had the most data up and when, what our stations and their 
competitors were doing. At 6pm, we all moved into a larger, 
dramatically-lit, windowless, tech-savvy computer lab across the hall, 
with one large-screen projection TV tuned to CNN, and three smaller TVs 
watching and taping different local and cable news outlets. Everyone on 
our team sat at a computer and began, every half hour, to snatch web 
captures like pixellated butterflies. At first, we were all fairly 
energised and excited. This was a long time coming. Months of work, and 
it's finally Election Night! Woo!

We've been so focussed on our individual markets, it's almost as if we're 
there. I've never been to Iowa, but boy, do I have some choice words 
ready for Senate candidate Greg Ganske's campaign managers if I ever see 
them. I mean, the guy looks like a weasel to begin with, don't paint him 
as some slavering, vindictive malcontent, pointing up every mistake Dem. 
Tom Harkin and his campaign made (and there were a few) without once-- 
ONCE-- saying, okay, politics are like this, let's move on and talk about 
issues. And oh, please G-d, don't send out email  newsletters in garish, 
oversized type that looks like your kid nephew put them together in 
between X-box fixes. The way to respond to something your opponent does 
that you don't like is to do something better, not publically pounce and 
worry it to death endlessly like a rat terrier. I would also have liked 
to see a Ganske ad with an original idea, not a defensive one, but it's 
all over now. I was supposed to be following the Governor's race, as 
well, but blessedly, it was almost an oasis of calm in the media storm.

South Dakota? I want to give Stephanie Herseth a hug. She ran a great 
campaign, she's only 31, and she'll be back. I don't particularly like 
Bill Janklow, her Republican opponent for the state's only House seat, 
but when the national Republican party ran a nasty, erroneous attack ad 
against Herseth, he was as outraged as she was, and they both demanded it 
be pulled. As for the Senate race, Johnson and Thune pulled off a trick I 
still can't quite grasp: the whole state is utterly sick of their 
overwhelming, nasty ad war, but the voters-- upon whom an average of $35 
EACH was spent (that adds up to MILLIONS spent in a state that only has 
750,000 people)-- turned out in droves to voice their opinions, and 
seemed almost pained to have to choose between two hard-working guys whom 
everybody says really do seem to mean well. 

And we followed the races and the coverage so closely-- we all got 
personally wrapped up. The webmaster in Iowa, Tad, was great, and I told 
him I owe him a box of doughnuts. Their site is great, with quizzes and 
issue grids and all. KELO did some cool stuff-- and they're still at it. 
All of us built relationships with our stations-- well, except Kellie, 
who had to work through a mediator to get anything done at her wreck of a 
station in Pittsburgh. But then again, it's Pittsburgh. And Russ-- his 
station was WCCO in Minnesota. When Senator Wellstone's plane went down, 
he was crushed. "I felt like I knew the guy," he said.

So that brought us to last night with a very different perspective from 
most of the rest of the voting public. We concentrated actively on 
getting issue coverage, and on polls and surveys, not all the nasty media 
attacks and tricks. When you strip away the screaming and the 
recriminations and the video, you're left with real people who may 
disagree, but are at least willing to go to the line for what they 
believe in. We all had our personal choices in all our markets, nine of 
which in which we couldn't even vote-- while the Annenberg Public Policy 
Center is strictly non-partisan, the Annenberg Public Policy faculty, 
staff and students are not.

The results took longer to come in, since VNS threw in the towel. And at 
first we were all bright-eyed and cheerful-- especially when the pizzas 
arrived. And then, as the evening progressed, we watched the candidates 
we'd been quietly rooting for slowly start to fall off the radar, one 
after the other. Good men and women who, their campaign managers and 
media handlers aside, got into politics for good reasons, and fought 
long, hard battles because they believed in something and wanted to prove 
it. It's always like that-- someone has to win, and someone has to lose. 
But it was hard to watch, especially when you consider we're a room full 
of idealistic liberals. Hardest of all, of course, was Russ' race-- all 
ballots in Minnesota are hand-counted, so results were painfully slow 
coming in. But when they did, it was a little disheartening.

I stayed long after almost everyone else left. The beer was gone, the 
last remaining sandwiches had begun to call each other names, and 
tumbleweeds blew through the pizza boxes, all of Iowa had turned off the 
lights and gone to bed, but South Dakota was still up. I stayed until the 
security guard started giving the last two of us the hairly eyeball, and 
finally, dispirited, with my candiates only 1% apart, I had to crawl home 
at 1am. 

Before I even checked my mail this morning at 9am, I looked at South 
Dakota. Still no answer, and a recount looked inevitable. I scrambled 
into work by 10, and still, no clear answer. Matter of fact, I've just 
checked again, and theough KELO is declaring Johnson the victor, they're 
also carefully noting that Thune hasn't quite officially conceded. With 
only 528 votes between them, I'm not sure I would, either.

Still. In the end, all the hype and spitting aside, it worked. Voter 
tunout was, in some places, astonishingly high for mid-term elections. 
People are as connected or disconnected as they want to be. I don't care 
for whom you voted-- okay, I do, but that's neither here nor there-- but 
if you went out and voted, you participated. You participated. We 
participated. Love it or hate it, everyone did what they were supposed 
to, and what happened happened.

Now if you'll excuse me, my President just voted in New Hampshire, and 
I'm worried about why his hands are shaking.



Ysoie








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