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GradeBurr.com

Submitted by Jerimee on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 2:45pm

Almost a month ago I published a Drupal powered website: GradeBurr.com. Since then nearly 300 people have submitted an online "report card" for Senator Richard Burr and had a chance to share their opinion.

As you can guess, I have little love for Senator Burr myself. Sen. Burr followed President Bush's lead on nearly every issue, from dismantling Social Security to ignoring the suffering caused by Hurricane Katrina to undermining our national security with the failed war on Iraq.

More recently Sen. Burr:

That said, I felt it would be more effective to give people a platform where they can share their opinions than to list my own (extensive) criticisms. So far, the results have been mixed. I'd like to list some of the challenges and opportunities and encourage you to participate by submitting your own grade.

These are some of the problems I've experienced:

  • Obviously the results will never be scientific. Hopefully visitors don't expect this.
  • Giving an A or a D to Senator Burr, while quantitative, doesn't really tell a visitor why you approve or disapprove of Burr's performance; a libertarian and a progressive might both strongly object to Burr's handling of the economy, but for significantly different reasons.
  • Over a third (but less than half) of graders give Burr either straight As or straight Fs. While this might be some people's real opinion, I doubt that many people 100% love or loathe Burr. Plus it doesn't really tell a visitor anything about the grader or the Senator.
  • At first people were doing a pretty good job about not cheating, and I could be reasonably sure that most of the grades were from real people. At some point I'll probably need to come up with a better solution to protect the site from vandalism.
  • The site completely lacks anything to help inform visitors about Burr's policies. I need to figure out how to do this in an objective manner.

These are a few of the features I'd like to add:

  • Present visitors with a way to browse Senator Burr's record on the issues, perhaps using RSS feeds from other online media.
  • Allow graders a way to validate their identity. While I think many folks have concerns about being transparent online, I'd like to at least present it as an option.
  • Republicans are going to grade differently than Libertarians or Democrats. I'd like to give visitors a way to separate out those votes.
  • Increase the opportunity for in-depth responses. While I don't want to throw a massive survey at casual visitors, I ought to come up with some kind of workflow that would allow people to say more about the issues they know more about. Done well, this could make the site a true resource for voters.

These are my thoughts. I hope to hear yours. Please submit a grade if you haven't already.

 

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Comments

My grade: Incomplete

Submitted by Phillip Gilfus on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 7:13pm.

I feel about Sen. Burr that same way I felt about Rep. Hayes...I've never seen him and don't know anything about him. I assume Sen. Burr has come to Fayetteville, but I don't ever remember seeing him here in the last six years (maybe he has been to some of the BRAC events, but I really don't remember).

Maybe I don't fully appreciate their schedules...but, bottom line, you don't win re-election if the voters don't know you. Especially as a senator...you have six looong years to serve your constituents around the state. If you don't have a constituent office in a region, then you need to be showing up there a little more often than in the places where you do. And when politicians just start showing up at election time, the perception is that it is disingenuous.

Bottom line: It's basic public service, and that goes for Democrats and Republicans. If you can't hold town forums or make your way around your district/state...then don't expect a lot of groundswell of support to keep you around for another term.

Burr's staff is stuffing the ballot box

Submitted by jwillis44 on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 11:38pm.

Jerimee,

I think your voting site is one of the very best ideas that have come along in a long time. This thing could wind up being a huge new tool that will prove very informative. However, you'll never get honest results. Allow me to explain.

I'm a Republican and don't care for Burr at all. From a larger point of view, I don't care for any Republicans currently holding national office. I want them all thrown out in the next election. They brought us this financial crisis. So we need to clean house in my Republican Party. We need to throw out every darn Republican who served in national office while Bush was President.

About 2-3 months ago, I started a blog ... Republican against Burr. I found your voting site in Mid to Late May and was one of the first 5 people to submit my votes on Senator Burr. Then, on Friday, May 29th ... I blogged about your site and pointed people to it and encouraged them to vote.

Burr's staff reads my blog. I know this because I get hits off the chart from the network "US Senate Sergeant at Arms" and several comments posted to my blog have "Burr Staff" written all over them.

Within a couple days of my May 29 post about your voting site, the number of votes at your site zoomed from the mid 60s, to the high 200s. And strangely, the first 60-70 votes gave Burr an overall average of F, but the votes after I blogged about your site changed dramatically. I blog about your site, the vote count zooms, and those next 190+ votes, within a couple days, give Burr an average of A+, to pull the overall blend up from an "F" to a "B". And the comments are all lengthy and glowing. You didn't notice that pattern?

You know what that smells like? It smells like a Burr Campaign staff member finding your site, seeing the overall "F", and realizing that something has to be done. So, a minimum wage Burr Campaign staffer sits there with their Republican faithful email list and hits your site with 190 straight A+ votes to boost Burr's grade. I also think this because I made an addendum to my May 29th post on June 8 and suggested that's what happened. In the following days .. the voting on your site slowed appreciably.

Now, to be honest, that trick can cut both ways. When a couple Democrats get fired up and ready to run against Burr, I suspect they will have campaign staffers and email lists too. And they'll be hitting up your site with a long string of F votes for Burr.

Jerimee, I don't see how you're going to prevent this ballot box stuffing from happening. And unless you can find a way, the results simply can't be trusted.

If you want to understand why I'm one heck of an angry Republican who wants Burr gone, visit me at: http://republicanagainstburr.blogspot.com/

Great voting site Jerimee. Hope you can find a way to keep it honest. But I doubt you can.

J Willis

Actually, Drupal has a module

Submitted by Betsy Muse on Thu, 06/11/2009 - 12:13am.

that verifies email addresses. That would probably help.



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