The Voter’s Speakeasy

Summer in Montana

“So how’s your weather?” It’s a simple question made in moments where conversation is needed, whether it be to fill the void occupied currently by silence, or perhaps to connect on a base level, explaining to the person, through your concern that; yes, I too, live in a land with weather.

Well here in Montana we frequently get to surprise people with our answer, or simply confirm every stereotype they have of our lovely land to the north. For you see, some time around 12:45 MST June 22, 2009, snow began to fall on the Great Divide Ranch. But we are a tireless people, we mountainous denizens, ever waiting for the erstwhile zephyr of summer, toiling away, warmed only by the glow of computer monitors as we try to educate.

Anyway, I am rambling. How’s your weather?

Hello champions of Democracy!  It has been some time.  We’re bringing the blog back into business, so let’s start with what’s new.

Internship season is underway at the Vote Smart headquarters in Montana; more than 40 students from across the nation have joined our ranks to help produce the factual information on candidates and officials that you deserve.

Some of the major projects for the summer include (but are not limited to) writing summaries for state legislative key votes, updating biographical and contact information for each representative and candidate on our site, and verifying voter registration and local election office information.  Additionally, just a few weeks ago we held a civics education conference at the Ranch, which marks the beginning of our venture to bring Vote Smart into the classroom, helping to empower teachers bringing civics education to life for America’s youth.  I hope you’ll check back on these and other Vote Smart efforts over the next few months.

In Montana news, the commuting staff would like to send a shout out to the Granite County Road Department for scraping our 13-mile dirt road after a brutal competition in pothole dodging this winter and spring.  Today, Americans were able to enjoy an extra 15 minutes of democracy saving action from each staffer who’s commute has not been adjusted to the new, more flat, and thereby faster, road.  No one said bringing non-partisan information on candidates and officials to the people was going to be easy (especially on our cars).

One last thing for today’s post – if you have a few minutes to spare we could really use your help in improving the usability of our site.  We just posted a survey to collect your brilliant suggestions, so please, lend a hand if you can!

Project Vote Smart now has an official alumni listserv.  Intern alumni and former staff are invited to join. Please email bonnie@votesmart.org for more information.

Thanks!

Bonnie Wolf
Tucson Director

Halloween has a special place in my heart, it’s a day where we get to make up a persona or character, dress the part, and parade ourselves around to try to get some free treats and be generally jocular with others doing the same thing.
Having followed, very closely, the many races politicians are in, today I feel we can all better appreciate what it is they do. After all, what is a campaign if not Halloween everyday? Candidates dress themselves up as a persona or character, and parade around the district, state, or country looking for treats, be it money or votes.
We here at Project Vote Smart, however, asked something of the candidates that many of them didn’t want to give. We asked “are you willing to tell citizens your positions on the issues you are most likely to face on their behalf?”. It’s the core question of Vote Smart’s Political Courage Test.
I was there when the Political Courage Test was born, as a member of a dedicated team developing it for the presidential, congressional, gubernatorial and state legislative candidates. I made some of the calls to the first candidates that received the Test. And for those of us involved in its development, this Halloween marks an important anniversary. It marks the first time we asked the candidates for a peek under their mask. On this day in 2007, the first Political Courage Tests were due. Some may argue that the Tests were due from the most important candidates. The presidential candidates. So here’s a fun question you may not know the answer to- How many registered presidential candidates are hoping to drop the balloons in 4 days? I bet if you were to take the number you just came up with and multiplied it by 50 you’d still be too low. It’s 317.
Three hundred and seventeen citizens of the United States feel they are the best option to be the Commander-in-Chief. I don’t know what you think of, but that reminds me of American Idol. Everyone that auditions there thinks they are the best singer in the nation, how many of them can actually hold a tune? But I digress. We were able to test 234 of these hopefuls, missing the rest because of filing deadlines and dealing with testing all state and federal candidates. Fifty-nine of those presidential candidates were willing to take the test; a higher percentage than federal (41%), gubernatorial (46%) and state legislative (21%) candidates.
These numbers do feel a little defeating, but we are hopeful. Project Vote Smart isn’t going anywhere. So long as politicians are spending your money to bend facts, and create false images, we will be there to see which ones are willing to rise above and provide the straight facts. And for those candidates that aren’t? Keep an eye on the website, we’ve got a few plans for them.

The past 6 weeks, I have had the opportunity to travel over 6,000 miles across the American heartland with the Project Vote Smart national bus tour. While the travel is an exciting part of this adventure, we are on the move so often it is rare that we can explore the towns and cities we are in. However, the opportunity to speak with Americans of all backgrounds about their concerns and political interests has been nothing short of enlightening. On this leg we have visited towns as small as Jasper, AL and cities as large as Miami. What has been most interesting to me is that in all of these diverse communities we find individuals who are a) shocked to find out a non-partisan group like ours exists and b) excited at the opportunity to do their own research, find the hard data and draw their own conclusions. This sort of interaction has been the most interesting part of the tour for me.

Of course, not everyone is interested and many are understandably skeptical of anything political. It seems that many passers-by assume that we are either selling or preaching something. However, once we can get passed the initial skepticism, most people will at least take a copy of a Voters’ Self Defense Manual (VSDM). Especially on college campuses, it is easy to explain the extreme usefulness of a VSDM in an argument with friends or family. Explaining how to use the VSDM, I can often see that people are really excited so much information is so easily understandable and accessible.

The other very interesting measure of the communities we visit has been the messages written on our 8-foot American flag ball. Many people are eager to have their voices heard. Any time we set out the ball, we find that citizens are excited about finding a new canvass on which to express themselves. Naturally, some of the messages are less than appropriate and others not about anything in particular. However, we have found intriguing messages coming out of the visitors to the bus. One of my favorites so far has been from a lady in Cincinnati: “Vote to show respect to those who died for that right.” As this leg ends, I am left with a cautious optimism that there is a large segment of every population in this country striving to understand the political process and make a rational choice in the election booth – much more than most pundits give us credit for.

I look forward to returning to Montana shortly and wish the next bus crew much luck, clear skies and overwhelming media coverage.

-Ben Kastan

I once again had a the opportunity to get on the road with the Project Vote Smart Bus. This month long leg took us to Missoula, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, and to both parties’ conventions in Denver and St. Paul.

Unfortunately, the political pulse was not very high in the weeks approaching the conventions, but most stops still brought quality turns by both voters and the media. I’ll give you a little summary of how the conventions went for PVS.

Denver We got to Denver Saturday night and the police presence was immediately known. Riot police even kicked us off the bus within an hour of us being there.

Our parking spot was in a parking lot with a few other buses (buses are all the rage right now, with Rock the Vote, ONE, the Breast Cancer Awareness Society, The Bush Legacy, CNN, CSPAN, The Daily Show, and even Trojan Condoms having buses at the Convention, so there was definitely much for us to compete with). We were about a half mile from the Pepsi Center and directly across from the Colorado Convention Center. It was a good spot and there was a lot of quality foot traffic. People that came by seemed to like Vote Smart, but obviously, this was not the most ideal spot for non-partisanship. It was great to see young people involved and families all there to be part of our political process. Downtown Denver was packed with delegates, voters, and vendors – you could buy almost anything with a picture of Obama on it. There was definitely a buzz in the air all week. Unfortunately, there was so much going on that PVS didn’t get much media attention.

One interesting note, Rock the Vote had a few trucks parked in the same lot as us. And though they too are a nonprofit, nonpartisan group, their tactics are definitely different than ours. They have corporate sponsorship and celebrity endorsements and use entertainment to attract people to voting. I for one am glad that Project Vote Smart sticks to it’s mission statement, and although it isn’t sexy and doesn’t bring in as much money, it give voters the information they need.

St. Paul - St. Paul was much different than Denver. There seemed to be no regular people around – just protesters and riot police. We talked to tons of people on Monday and Tuesday, but then the city was basically dead Wednesday and Thursday. All the delegates were bussed directly into the Convention Center and never interacted with anyone else. I supposed this is a safeguard due to protests in the past, but it was disappointing for PVS.

It was an interesting week.  A good number of people were still interested in our bus, but again, not as many as we hoped.

So, the Conventions weren’t as groundbreaking for Project Vote Smart as we hoped, but our presence there was necessary. We provide an alternative partisan politics as usual.

Here we are continuing the brief review of the votes taken before the Congressional August recess.  To view other blog posts from over the last sixteen months or so, click here.

On July 17, the House voted on HR 6515, a bill on oil exploration.  This bill would facilitate drilling in Alaska and also try to encourage oil exploration on land already leased.  The bill was considered under a suspension of the normal rules, meaning debate was limited and amendments were not allowed to be offered.  When a bill is considered under a suspension of the rules like this, a two-thirds vote is required to pass it.  The House voted 244-173 on this bill, but because the vote fell short of that two-thirds mark it failed (summary).  Remember that when viewing any PVS summary, you can click “How members voted” in the upper right to view the yeas and nays on that vote.

Tax revenue collected on gasoline has been lower this year than projected, leading to a decrease in the size of the Highway Trust Fund.  The House voted 387-37 on July 23 to pass HR 6532 (summary).  This bill would transfer about $8 billion from the general fund in the Treasury to the Highway Trust Fund.  It passed 387-37 and is currently sitting in the Senate Finance Committee.

Also on July 23, the House had a vote to pass HR 3221, the high profile housing assistance bill that contains many tax-related provisions and provisions addressing housing assistance and loan assistance programs.  This bill raises the national debt limit to $10.62 trillion from $9.82 trillion, expands federal mortgage insurance programs, provides grants to states to redevelop abandoned properties, imposes loan limitations on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and imposes other regulations on these two companies, provides a tax credit for first time home buyers that they will have to repay over the fifteen years following the purchase of their home, and provides a property tax deduction for the state and local property taxes paid, with a limit of $500 for an individual and $1000 for a joint filing (summary).  The Senate concurred with the House version by a vote of 72-13 (summary) and the President signed it into law on July 30.

The next day the House voted on HR 3999, a bill that would authorize around $1 billion for the rebuilding of structurally deficient bridges (summary).  It passed 367-55. Read the rest of this entry »

Good day, Informed Voter.  Thank you for using the Project Vote Smart website to educate yourself about your candidates and elected officials!  As you have probably noted, there are many different ways in which you can ascertain issue positions and potential inclinations of your candidates and elected officials.  Project Vote Smart provides information on key votes, interest group ratings, campaign finance data, and issue positions via our Political Courage Test, among many other types of information.  Below is a brief description of how to navigate the Key Votes sections of our website.

PVS provides coverage of your elected officials’ voting records at the national and state levels.  You can view a list of key votes by clicking on “Issues and Legislation” on the left side of the PVS home page (in the blue column).  The top link on the next page reads “CongressTrack: Key Votes.”  To view Congressional key votes, click on that link.  To view state key votes, click on the link below it, which reads “State Key Votes.”  We’ll assume that you are viewing Congressional key votes for the purposes of this blog entry, but they are organized very similarly (the primary difference in site navigation is that when selecting state key votes, you will be prompted to select a state before viewing any key vote summaries).

Once you have clicked on “CongressTrack: Key Votes” a screen will come up that provides three methods of searching through our key votes database.  1. On the left is a drop down menu that allows you to select a category.  Our categories for state and Congressional votes are always the same.  You can select a category here in which you are interested, and select a year on the next screen.  2. You can search for a piece of legislation by its number in the middle search engine.  You do not need to include the prefix of the legislaion if you do not wish to.  Once you have typed in the number click ‘Go’ or hit enter.  3. On the search engine on the right, you can search by keyword.  Again, click ‘Go’ or hit enter.

After searching by any of these methods, a list of votes matching your criteria will appear.  In this list, the date of the vote, the legislation number, the PVS title, and the outcome of the vote will appear.  PVS writes all of its own summaries on key votes.  To view the summary of a vote, click on the PVS title in this list. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a post that we have published on the Voter’s Speakeasy a couple of times over the last year or so, and we are posting it again here.  Many folks are not particularly familiar with the paths bills normally take to become law, and as usership of our site and blog increase, we want to make this post easily accessible to those of you who may need a refresher on this topic.

Most people learn how a bill becomes a law around junior high or even elementary school (Click here for a YouTube presentation of the Schoolhouse Rock video of a bill trying to become a law). But for many of us, that’s a long time ago, and most teachers didn’t get that in depth. You may remember that a bill passes the House and Senate and is signed by the president and then becomes a law. You may remember that if the President vetoes the bill, Congress can override the veto. If you remember these things, you’ve got the bare bones knowledge that you need to begin to understand the legislative process. We’ll go a little more in depth here. Remember, sometimes legislation does not take a well-worn route to become a law, and there is always politics to be played.  Sometimes agreements are reached between the parties that dictate strict debate times or prohibit amendments, etc.  Almost every step described below is a generalization and may occasionally be altered or bypassed in specific instances. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is a continuation of our review of some of the key votes taken by Congress before their August recess.  Click on the “summary” links to view more information about that piece of legislation.  According to the calendar on the Senate website (view here as a pdf), the Congress is expected to reconvene on September 8.  If you would like to view blog posts about other votes taken in Congress over the last year or so, click here.

On June 26, the House took a vote on HR 6251 under a suspension of the rules (summary).  This bill would require a business that holds leases to drill for oil or gas on federal land to develop those leases before being granted leases to additional land.  The vote was 223-195, but failed because of a requirement that it have a two-thirds majority.  Considering a bill under a suspension of the rules limits debate on the bill and prohibits amendments, but also carries that two-thirds majority requirement for passage.  Also, remember that you can view the yeas and nays for any vote by clicking on “How Members Voted” in the upper right of the summary page.

Also on June 26, the Senate took a vote on the whole of HR 2642.  This bill provided new extensions for unemployment benefits, additional education assistance for veterans (new GI bill), funding for midwestern flood cleanup, funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a moratorium on certain actions related to the administration of the Medicaid program (summary).  This was the final vote on the bill, and this summary reflects the final version that was signed into law by the President.  The vote passed the Senate 92-6. Read the rest of this entry »