Introduction and our Evaluation Criteria for General Elections for Year 2000
Plus Voting Strategies

Politicians -
What they do, not what they say, and following their money trail gets you closer to the truth of who they really are.

In keeping with the main issues of this site, we have attempted to evaluate the candidates on:

* Campaign, Election and Judicial Reform
* Media Reform
* Environmental and Animal Protection
* Basic Human Rights
* Sustainable Economics

Click here to see why we chose the above issues and what each issue involves.

At this time, this site has a brief look at some local races in Northern California and detailed information on the Presidential Race.

The site does have links to scorecards on elected officials in the California State Senate and Assembly and the same for Oregon State Legislature and scorecards on US Senators and Members of the House of Representative. If your elected official got a low score on issues important to you, question voting for that person.

We have provided some useful internal and external links to web sites that will allow you to evaluate incumbent voting records. Additionally, we have included links that show major contributors to incumbents and challengers.

Voting Strategies:

Primary Election Cycle:
In the primary election cycle the American voters actually have some real choices, much more and with less risk than in the General Election cycle. Unfortunately, turnout for the primary election is usually lower and sometimes powerful elected officials go unopposed in the primary. In the primary, voters should select the most appropriate candidate in any given party, it sends the strongest message for change and has low risk.

General Election Cycle (November 2000):
If after carefully analyzing the information on this site's and other site's Presidential web pages, you might conclude that one or more of the third party candidates is a better fit for democracy than Bush or Gore. This might lead you to the following seemingly paradoxical question:

You would like to vote for a third party candidate like Nader, Buchanan, Hagelin or Browne, but are afraid you might get Bush or Gore (depending whom you dislike the most) elected by pulling off votes?

There is a relatively safe way to vote for whomever you really would like to see as President, have relatively low risk of helping to elect someone you do not want in the White House, and send a strong message to the Democratic and Republican parties.

The election is on a state by state basis, winner take all electoral votes for that state. If the polls in the final week show Bush winning in Texas by a fair margin (very likely), then if you are a Texas voter, you can relatively safely vote for the third party candidate of your choice. A similar scenario might exist in California for California voters; if the polls show Gore winning California easily, you can vote for a third party candidate like Nader with low risk of getting Bush elected. Voting for one of the third party candidates sends a message to the major parties and the major media.

Of course, if you are really fed-up almost equally with both Bush and Gore, you should vote for one of the third party candidates.

Here are links to sites that let you "swap" your vote for Nader with someone in a gone to Bush state. They vote for Nader if you vote for Gore. The idea is to get 5% of total vote for Nader which will give some presidential check-off funds to Green Party in the future, but will block Bush from capturing the Presidency.
Click here for a web page with the Voter Exchange websites and the latest Polling results websites.

We have not found a link for a Buchanan Bush vote swap site, please send us the link if you discover one.

You Can Help:

We are always looking for good Internet based sources of information on candidates and the political process.

Keeping in mind the criteria on which we evaluate candidates, please send us information and links.

 

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