Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Elections An Innovative Web Election Feature

If voters in Massachusetts wanted to separate candidate personalities from the issues in their past gubernatorial election, WBUR.org
(http://www.wbur.org) , Boston's NPR affiliate, provided a way. Its "Vote By Issue (http://www.wbur.org/news/candidateq/) " quiz was innovative in
its use of the web's interactive qualities to provide an excellent journalistic service. To create the interactive, the station asked the state's five candidates for governor to provide the fundamentals of their positions on 10 key topics. Then, they took that information and put each stance with a "faceless"candidate. Users were asked to choose the stance they most agree with. In the end, they got a report card, revealing which candidate's plan they chose for each issue. (That's a great concept you might want to borrow for your next election's coverage.)

· Vote [ Wbur]