Just poked around the various party websites to see if any of the candidates were blogging - hoping to find a real person running, rather than a campaign manager puppet or a focus group byproduct. I found some interesting things.
Liberal party: They appear to have one blog - posted by Martin's speechwriter via his Blackberry. Very cool. Subscribed. (but it doesn't have full text of entries, just titles. maybe unsubscribing...) My candidate doesn't even have an "about" page - just a map of the riding. Bad form. In the last election, Paul Martin published a blog - it was likely massaged by PR goons, but it was a start. I was hoping they might take the next step...
NDP: They're using Drupal to manage the party's online stuff! My candidate even has an (empty) news page which would be kinda blogish, if he was posting anything... Looks like the NDP is really only using Drupal to manage publishing press releases, speeches, and official responses. That's too bad. So close...
Green Party: Jim Harris has a blog on Typepad (subscribed) but the candidate in my riding appears to be doing nothing online...
Conservative Party: Using a commercial CMS called Expression 1.7. No blogging, but they are podcasting and vodcasting. And they have a "live" photo gallery. Feels pretty massaged - not sure how much of this is "real" and how much is massaged by a PR expert...
Marijuana Party: Using SPIP. Couldn't find any candidates blogging, but they seem to at least have bios for candidates.
Why on earth don't parties encourage their candidates to blog? To show they are real people, and not just plastic committee-driven amalgamations of focus group fodder? That's my perception of politicians, and has been for several years. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this. It would take very little effort to break this perception, if it's incorrect.
Suggestions for the parties:
- Blog. If the candidates aren't going to do it, at least link to other relevant blogs. But this is a pretty straightforward way to show candidates are human.
- Discussion forums for the issues. This can't be a one-way publish/receive model anymore. Solicit actual feedback from constituents. And USE it.
- RSS feeds. Make it easy for us to follow along.
- Here's a radical idea: use wiki pages for your position/issue papers. Let constituents provide feedback and help craft the documents. Sure, you'll get some noise by "competing" parties, but managing that noise might be worth the benefit of actually including the constituents in the process...
Update: Tod Maffin did a bit of a breakdown of the major party web efforts.