jambop

Local Politics

I've been pitching in a little bit with an effort to improve the quality of discussion and discourse about issues in two upcoming Medford (Massachusetts) elections: for City Councilor and for School Committee.  I've been mostly interacting with Jim Kiely (though many others are pitching in) to draft and deliver a set of issues-related questions to the candidates.  The questions were drafted to be concise, locally relevant and politically neutral so as not to give any candidate an advantage over another, especially in regards to incumbency  or party affilliation.

I've lived in Medford almost five years, and there seems to be no comprehensive mechanism to understand candidates' view on issues that affect Medford. It's hard to do my homework! The local press, Medford Mercury and the Medford Transcript (aka the Picayune), have woefully mediocre campaign coverage.  The Transcript is exceptionally bad in its issue coverage, though it seems anytime an incumbent attends a picnic they get a front-page headline or picture.

My mom used to participate in the League of Women Voters in my hometown of West Orange, NJ, and the LWV used to prepare the questions and distribute the local candidates' responses to similar questionnaires.  I've never heard of the LWV in a Medford context - there's certainly no other similar non-sectarian effort locally, though the Medford Democrats will be having a forum.  The thing is, even though this is Massachusetts, not all of the candidates are necessarily Democrats.  I'm curious how much all of the candidates will engage with that effort, and also how well the results are distributed beyond existing party channels.

Anyway, I'll be hosting the Vote Medford 2005 effort on my website.  I worked out a reasonably simple category structure such that it's easy to

• View the questionnaires for the City Council and School Committee candidates,
• View each candidate's response to each of the questions,
• And for each question, to view all of the candidates' responses to that question.

In terms of ease-of-authoring, the categories (metadata) are relatively simple, but there will still be a lot of cuttin' and pastin' -- 11 questions for City Council times 11 (?) candidates plus 12 School Committee questions times 9 (?) candidates equals something like 229 separate pieces of content.

Intelligent Design?

Also, as a parent with kids in the school system, there's a curious omission in the School Committee questionnaire:

• Where's the question that asks candidates to describe their position on the teaching of intelligent design in the science curriculum? 

Among the parents with whom I've discussed the School Committee election and this questionnaire, this is the top question.  I'm concerned about efforts in other school districts in which local school boards are packed with crypto-envangelists who ram this creationist psuedo-science down kids throats. 

Journalistically speaking, it seems a no-brainer to ask School Committee candidates about this.

A question related to this was watered down to the candidate's opinion on the role of religion in the classroom.  Let's talk about xmas, hanukkah, ramadan, kwaanza, and, um, other in December, shall we?  Should make for gripping reading.