No decent website = No vote
Today is the primary election in California. As usual I procrastinated and am going to have to vote this evening after I’ve done a rush job researching candidates. However, I’ve encountered an interesting filter: website quality. This may not work for the bigger offices, as people like Meg Whitman can afford massive marketing teams. But one area where it seems really helpful is in the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction. California’s schools suck right now. Throttled by bureaucracy, mismanagement, and unions more interested in protecting their benefits than in serving children, we are terrible at producing children with any kind of future outside of well-to-do suburban schools.
So if I’m gonna pick somebody to turn things around, shouldn’t they show a reasonable grasp of 21st century technology? Our kids are lagging in math, science and technology. If a candidate really gets where we need to be, here’s what I want to see, beginning with what’s the most important:
- A website with a non-stupid domain name (i.e. votenorm.com and not nomranpfleegmanforoffice2010.com)
- Clear, easily discoverable information about the candidate, their stance on major issues, and who endorses them
- Strong advocacy for the Internet and technology as part of classroom instruction
- A site that isn’t static like a printed flyer; dynamic content like a blog and twitter feeds to provide constant updates.
- HTML 5, competent use of css, adherence to open web standards and use of open source software
- Community presence and a place for voters to interact and communicate with the candidate and one another
- Sans-serif fonts that improve the reading experience
- A site that doesn’t look like a canned site purchased from a third-rate webmaster
- Even better, a site built and maintained by the candidate themself
Basically, if I can’t tell that the candidate knows what the Internet is for, they’re not getting my vote. And so my impressions of the prospective future Superintendents of Public Instruction:
Larry Aceves has a decent website. The color scheme isn’t the greatest and the css isn’t the most sophisticated, but it’s functional and not buggy and I was able to find what I was looking for quickly. There’s the obligatory links to Twitter and Facebook, which no marketing person or candidate for office The dude’s from the Bay Area, so maybe being surrounded by techies and not rednecks from Barstow pays off when it comes to communicating effectively online. Its main weak spot is lack of any dynamic content. A blog would have taken this site from static but useful to a truly twenty-first century campaign hub.
Karen Blake’s site looks like a bad parody of 1996. From the horrible rotating cube in the right corner to the broken flash links to the graph from PowerPoint hell, everything about this site screams “I do not understand the power of the web nor its importance in our society.” This chick instills no trust in me whatsoever, but then she does have the disadvantage of coming from Bakersfield, which ranks pretty low on quality of life. With this kind of a presence, I just don’t trust her to understand how to guide kids toward the future.
Alexia L. Deligianni only has a Facebook page. I want somebody to guide kids, not to want to be back in junior high with them. Pass.
The website of Lydia Gutierrez kept timing out due to being tapped out on bandwidth. Somebody who understands tech infrastructure so little as to not purchase enough bandwidth to handle election traffic has no business governing the infrastructure of our schools. Insufficient bandwidth = visitors can’t get information. Something tells me she’d also give teachers insufficient resources and then wonder why kids aren’t reading.
Diane Lenning’s site is a nightmare of digital clutter colliding with a blasé color scheme and useless sound bites of information. It reminds me of a bulletin board in a dorm hallway; too much information to absorb in reasonable amounts and too shabby in presentation to care about. Also, using comic sans for your resumé is justification for murder in geek circles. This site shows no connection with anybody under 40. No thanks.
Leonard Martin used WordPress (plus) but didn’t leverage it by employing anything as simple as widgets (minus). Too many pages clutter the header, and the long list is repeated in the sidebar. Still, the fact that this guy knows what open source software is is a mark in his favor, although he really needs to surround himself with people who can help him understand how powerful it is.
If Karen Blake is a bad parody of 1996, then Grant McMicken is a bad parody of 1997. All it needs is a Geocities banner and sparkles on that California flag graphic.
Gloria Romero has the funding and marketing power to put together a decent website, but website bugs and stupid use of generic images makes this look like a canned corporate site, not something I should take seriously. I can’t even find a page that breaks down the issues.
Henry Williams, Jr. has put up a poster where a website should be. If you don’t know what the Internet is (and no, it is not a digital telephone pole on which to staple enormous bandwidth-sucking graphics), stay the hell away from our classrooms, thankyouverymuch.
Tom Torlakson’s site is the first one that really gets it. With a blog and easily discoverable information on the issues, this site shows that the candidate grasps what the web is actually for. Candidates take note: being an out-of-touch middle aged schlub = bad. Leveraging modern, dynamic technology = good.
Daniel M. Nusbaum lives in Beverly Hills but doesn’t have a website. Neither does Faarax Dahir Sheikh-Noor. Someone who thinks so little of the Web shouldn’t be elected to any office at all, let alone one that shapes educational policy.
California’s need for a Superintendent who really understands how badly we need to move forward in science, math, and technology is probably our most critical issue. Based on that, I’d have to go with Torlakson. All the other candidates look like old fogies who haven’t bothered to keep up with the times, and won’t demonstrate the sort of forward thinking that we so desperately need.
Great post, and a sensible metric! However, perhaps Karen Blake and Grant McMicken are being the most progressive of all by letting kindergarteners write their HTML.
This is like picking a phone company based on their logo. (You would of course pick AT&T, because their logo is the Death Star. It’s not close. Verizon’s logo is a red check mark.)
You are of course entitled to your vote, but you managed to pick the guy the teachers’ unions support. Oops.
No, it’s like picking a phone company based on how well their marketing materials communicate their understanding of telecommunications service. I never said he was a good candidate, just the one I could live with. Haven’t you seen the South Park episode “Douche and Turd?”