The Web & The Wire

Technology Column with Joe Granese

Primary resources for the primary elections 

By state law, New Hampshire holds its presidential primary elections at least seven days before any other similar election. The good citizens of the Granite State are well versed in travel and transport during the winter months, and can be expected to make it to the polls regardless of the weather.

Here in balmy southern New Jersey, we are more comfortable in warmer weather. Snowstorms and other midwinter hazards have a tendency to send us running to the nearest convenience store for milk, bread and eggs, as we prefer to eat french toast at home rather than risk our lives on the highways.

Without regard for the possibility of bad weather, the New Jersey presidential primary election will be held Tuesday, Feb. 5 this year, rather than in our traditional springtime slot. A total of 24 states will hold their primaries on that day, now known as Super Tuesday.

Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Missouri and New Mexico Democrats, along with Republicans in North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia, originally were scheduled to hold their primaries Feb. 5.

Several other states have changed their elections to that date as well. These include Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho Illinois, and Kansas among the Democrats, and Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana Republicans. New Jersey, New York and Tennessee have also rescheduled.

With big fields heading into all the primary elections, and several candidates showing a good chance of making it to the general election, voters may find it difficult to keep up with the process and the players. To help ensure that Untangled Web readers have every possible resource at their disposal, here are a few informative websites to help with your primary selections.

www.stateline.org

This is an exceptionally handy website for anyone interested in keeping up to date with domestic politics, including elections. The Stateline website was originally designed as a resource for journalists. Publishing every weekday since 1999, the site presents collected research along with other useful information. It is always worth a visit when political questions arise.

The website offered the best graphical representation of the primary picture that I found on the web. Presented in PDF format, the chart listed all of this season’s big primary dates color coded by party. States that hold two primaries on the same day are listed in black.

Additionally, a chart of the 2004 primary schedule is presented alongside the 2008 listings, to show exactly how drastically the primary picture has changed in the last four years. Better still, it offers maps with color coding for both years, making it simple to make and understand comparisons. This could be an important tool for anyone hoping to explain or understand the new process.

Along with the election-related materials, Stateline offers a front page packed with byte-sized bits of news linked to more detailed stories elsewhere. It is well organized and indexed, so finding the story you want becomes reasonably easy. For putting all the primary information you need in one place, www.stateline.org grabs four spiders.

www.lwvnj.org

Most of us are reminded of an impending election when we receive a sample ballot in the mail. It usually arrives a few days before Election Day and offers an early look at the candidates and questions that will appear on the upcoming ballot. The League of Women Voters of New Jersey has been mailing out these sample ballots for decades. Now it has an Internet presence as well.

Many of the voter problems that turned up in the past few years may have been prevented if every enfranchised citizen took a moment to read over their sample ballot or visit this website. Nonconnected citizens can access the site for free from their local public library, where help is available for the new user.

The site offers a complete rundown of primary election related dates for voters who may have been confused by the recent rescheduling. Jan. 29 is the deadline for absentee ballot requests made by mail, while in-person requests will be accepted until Feb. 4 at the county clerk’s office.

There is a concise explanation of exactly who is entitled to vote in the presidential primary election at www.lwvnj.org/VotersService/2007-0205_PresPrimDates.shtml. Only voters who have registered as members of the Democratic or Republican parties can participate. Those who have not declared a party preference and are classified as unaffiliated can make their choice at the polls on Feb. 5 and vote accordingly.

The League of Women Voters of New Jersey was founded at Rutgers University in 1920. It has been helping citizens take an active part in government by encouraging and educating the voting public, and its website continues that work in the Information Age. For helping people make a considered choice and have their voices heard, www.lwvnj.com elects five spiders.

www.pollingreport.com

Polling results can be among the most difficult data to fathom during any election season. It seems that every news story comes complete with a couple of poll figures and a quick accuracy disclaimer that fall just short of making the concept understandable. The folks at www.pollingreport.com have gone a long way to help voters see what others are thinking.

The site reports a large selection of polling results from various sources. Every page includes the exact wording of the poll question along with an outline of the poll respondents. The margin of error, abbreviated as MoE, is also posted.

While I would like to have had a look at other questions that appeared on each poll, this presentation is both lucid and easy to follow. The reported polls take a look at everything from the upcoming presidential primary and general elections to congressional issues. I even found a section that presented results for a poll asking if respondents had a favorable or unfavorable impression of various candidates and persons in the news.

Readers may find some of the polling results surprising. Several pollsters have already begun to work on hypothetical match-ups for the November elections, pitting various frontrunners against both likely and improbable opponents. They may already have the real race among the selections. Right or wrong, it is one of the more entertaining political sites online. For helping clear the waters on polling, www.pollingreport.com queries five spiders.

Please do not forget to vote Feb. 5. It is important to make your vote count now and in November. Gain familiarity with the candidates, the issues and the election process by visiting these sites and others like them. If you have any election-related sites to share, send the URLs to me at granese@juno.com.