While various political bloggers have been batting candidates back and forth for several months now, the Liberal candidates themselves have so far – with one or two notable exceptions – given cyberspace a wide berth. Several declared candidates have no visible online presence; several others have minimal web sites. Only one seems to acknowledge the changes the have swept the web in the past few years – changes that, apparently, have largely left Liberal leadership hopefuls behind.
(Bear in mind that I’m a committed New Democrat, so I’m not going to be especially gentle with any of these folks. On the other hand, I’m not backing any of them, either, so I’ll at least be somewhat evenhanded.)
Here’s a quick survey of the field, and their respective web presences:
Dr. Carolyn Bennett: There’s a perfectly functional, content-rich web site here; unfortunately, it’s buried several layers inside an interface that makes a serious usability mistake.
Once you click past the English/Français splash screen, you arrive at an attractive photo of Dr. Bennett’s desk, with a large agenda book open in front of you. You navigate by clicking on entries in the address book. But if you’re visually impaired (or surfing on a slow dial-up connection), you have a problem… because the copy on that home page and on most of the pages it links to is done entirely as graphics; unless you can actually see the image, you have no idea what the text says. It’s an approach that puts design ahead of accessibility. The one saving grace would have been the use of “alt” attributes (a piece of code which provides a text-based alternative to an image), but the site’s designer hasn’t added them yet. (Here’s hoping they do.) (Updated: I may not have been entirely fair; I finally found a little text-version link, way at the bottom-right-hand side of the page. So there is an option for the visually- and patience-impaired… but they’ll have to wade through the whole page to find it.)
Several layers down is the actual site, which uses a clean, easily-navigated design (and recapitulates the content of what they call the “photo site”). It includes a blog (but, unfortunately, no feeds or reader comments), a list of e-mail contacts for the campaign, an e-newsletter, a newsroom (again, no feeds) and more. There’s a page promising a wide-ranging policy discussion, but no interactivity yet, apart from a form for anyone who wants to attend a “democracy dinner”.
Maurizio Bevilacqua (URL corrected): So far, his only online presence is his MP site (which merits a little drive-by criticism for publishing every speech as a PDF; for not having been updated in literally years; and for requiring you to click once to choose English or French, and then again to get past a truly unhelpful Flash animation). Interestingly, mauriziobevilacqua.ca currently resolves to a “No web site configured at this address” message… so something new may be coming.
Wait a minute… there it is! But so far, it doesn’t even show up in the first 50 Google hits on the man’s name. I’ll have more to say soon.
Scott Brison: If not for Ignatieff, Brison’s would be the clear leader among the various web sites. It has polished design and visual appeal, as well as simple navigation through a wide range of content. There’s an email newsletter, send-to-a-friend features for each page, a volunteer form, full contact information and, yes, not one but three separate news feeds (but curiously, no omnibus feed).
Where Brison’s site falls short, though, is in offering any real sense of interactivity and openness. While Ignatieff’s site has an apparently no-holds-barred discussion forum and the promise of a policy forum, Brison’s site’s public face involves only one-way communication. There’s no blog and no comments.
Stéphane Dion: It’s 1996 again! Dion’s web site is sparsely populated, with only four or five pages of content. There’s a contact form (with no space for a message from you), one speech, a news release, a news story and that’s about it. No e-mail contact, no blog, no news feeds.
Update: Suddenly, there’s a lot more content: speeches, video and photos, all of it contained (hidden?) in the “Newsroom” area.
Mildly embarrassing factoid: The URLs for the en français pages are written en anglais. So “why-im-running_e.html” is, in French, “why-im-running_f.html”. That’s more than just a political gaffe; it reduces the site’s chances of appearing high in French-language search results.
Martha Hall Findlay: Give her credit: she actually has contact information on her site, with an email address, phone number and a contact form. There’s a single page called “Issues”, which is so far pretty vague and general, relying more on boldface and italics than policy – but I understand that these things get rolled out as a campaign develops.
There are lots of pictures of Findlay campaigning, a bio page, a donation page (no online form or e-commerce yet), a form for volunteering, a link for joining the party and an event calendar. (None of the events are linked to anything, however.) But no blog, and no feeds.
Michael Ignatieff: The front page is a blog, although comments are handled through forum software. There’s a news feed, an online community (the same forum that handles comments), a “policy forum” (much more moderated and controlled than that name suggests), and pages for getting involved and contacting the campaign.
The community is the most interesting feature on the site (and it, too, offers a news feed). These are early days, so there isn’t much discussion yet, but it bears watching – both for its own sake, and to see how the campaign handles the inevitable influx of supporters of Mr. Ignatieff’s opponents (not to mention people opposing the invasion of Iraq or Mr. Ignatieff’s position on torture).
Ignatieff’s is the only Liberal leadership campaign site so far that makes even a nod to the social web – but even it seems a little limited and isolated from the broader web. There are no feeds brought in from other sites, no hooks for services like photo-sharing or geographical self-identification, and certainly no individual blogs or team fundraising/campaigning features.
Ashley MacIsaac: If he has a campaign site, it’s well-hidden. All I can find is his official musician-guy web site, which links to the Halifax Daily News web site, which once had a story on him phoning them to say he’s running. I’m considering taking bets on whether he’ll actually be on the ballot.
Bob Rae: Rae appears to have nothing but a placeholder page. (Is “Call me Bob” really going to be his big meme?) Geek note: apparently, it will be based on a ColdFusion CMS.
Updated: As of April 27th, the placeholder GIF has finally been replaced. Sadly, by a placeholder Flash animation.
Joe Volpe: Slicker than Dion’s site, Volpe’s makes a bold leap to, oh, about 1999. There’s a donation form, but it isn’t e-commerce enabled; it’s just a way to pass on your contact info so they can call you up to ask for your credit card number. There are forms to volunteer and sign up for updates, and a Volpe bio. Here, too, the only way to contact the campaign is through a form (although it at least offers a blank space for you to include a message).
The site’s marred, though, with unlinked links on the Get Involved page (oddly enough, the pages they ought to link to actually do exist). And if you’re looking for news, speeches or actual substance, you’re out of luck so far. There’s little news, although there are plenty of links to off-site news coverage. “Joe’s Views” is a single page of fairly benign generalities; other than that, there’s no policy. Needless to say, no blog and no news feeds. And that logo…
Speaking of design, there’s a classic design error on many pages, where an unnecessarily large photo pushes the message “below the fold” – that is, you have to scroll down at least once to see any actual content.
The wallflowers: Ken Dryden still has his election campaign site; the blog devoted to drafting him is beginning to lose its enthusiasm. And until recently, Gerard Kennedy‘s domain name linked to his constituency web site. It now goes nowhere… leading me to deduce that a new web presence is in the works. Would have been nice (and less embarrassing) to have a placeholder site there in the meantime, though, no?
I’ll keep updating this page as new sites come online and old ones get spritzed with freshener. Meanwhile, for a perspective from the other side of the spectrum, check out Blue Blogging Soapbox.
Just by the by, Bob’s appears to be the only one of them that isn’t built on either static pages or PHP; it’s on some Cold-Fusion-based system.
Not that the open-source lobby within the Liberal Party has quite the sway I wish it did…
Re. Joe Volpe: “And that logo…”
No kidding. Does this say “I want to be your leader!” or “I want to claw your eyes out!”?
On the other hand, he may just be going after that unrepresented niche voter the Montreal Expos fan. :o)
I think Paul Martin’s record clearly establishes these are compatible objectives.
Of course, there is the distinct possibility that all the “interaction” features and other such baubles and bright shiny objects are overrated. Remember that 85% or so of the people who click on a website don’t know RSS from CSS, and aren’t fixated on blogs. (They may also be turned off by blogs and other online free-for-alls.) Of those who are not the great unwashed, I’m not convinced that most will hold it against them.
This isn’t facetious; how many of the Kossacks’ favoured candidates have actually won election? They’ve raised some campaign contriburtions, but how about providing a real boost to sign-pounding, door-to-door and phone solicitation, and GOTV efforts? My impression is that what works amongst people who spend all their time online does not do nearly as well in the Real World. So you may see some campaigns put more emphasis on strengthening their core organization than trying to have an online community because it’s the hip thing to do. I’m not saying it’s the case for every campaign, but it’s more plausible than every single Lib leadership campaign being totally in the dark.
As for Iggy — are you referring to people who object to his actual stance on torture, or to the crude caricature of his position being spread by certain dishonest hacks who count on their readers not reading the original article?
Ian, rest assured I’m much more interested in the function of the baubles than their shininess. It isn’t that they win favour with some bloggers; it’s that they make it easier for people who are excited by your message and candidacy to spread the word. A blog can also be a terrific tool for managing issues more deftly and directly than you could with a media strategy. And news feeds provide one more way for reporters and commentators to keep up to date with your campaign; RSS has made big strides into the newsroom. Most people may not know their RSS from a hole in the ground, but more and more can recognize a “subscribe” link — especially if it’s one of those one-click subscription links that services like Bloglines and Yahoo! can use.
And let’s distinguish between the high-profile, rock-’em-sock-’em brawl blogs (brawlgs? oh, god, no) and the kind of blog a campaign wants. If you set the right tone on your blog, it doesn’t have to become an off-putting battleground. It can become a place for reasonably thoughtful engagement with readers.
Finally, it’s important not to sell raising campaign contributions short. Unless you’re a front-runner, attracting donations can be extremely difficult; successfully enlisting the blogging world in those efforts can make a huge difference, as many American campaigns have discovered.
Regardless of his position’s merits, Ignatieff has a classic political dilemma: a nuanced statement that has been cast in much starker terms. And he has a classic choice: engage that discussion and attempt to reframe it, or allow his detractors to define his stance. Those detractors, like it or not, will be coming to his forum, and that provides an opportunity for him to try door number two. I’ll be very interested in watching how he responds when they show up, because it could be a critical moment in his campaign.
Check out George Washington University’s Institute for Politics Democracy and the Internet. Best research for free
Small Donors
Online Influentials (.pdf)
Our local campaign raised over 3500 last campaign through the website.
Leadership campaigns are two phases. Memberships/delegate selection, then policy/persuasion. Each candidate is attempting to run a national campaign with limited resources. The web offers no cost/low cost tools to organize and communicate. Websites are not the end all, be all of a campaign but they certainly are a powerful weapon in a candidates arsenal, if used correctly. Social networking is becoming a powerful force to those that harness it correctly.
Let me give you a couple of different examples. Say you are a candidate with 500 delegates, 300 of which have cell phones and you have all the numbers. The majority of cell phones are SMS capable now, so you have instant mass communication with your delegates when it counts the most.
Phone solicitation and GOTV efforts – I can make more phone calls than three people using standard phones. 1 computer, 1 headset, the internet, VOIP application with predictive dialer for a fraction of the cost of traditional phones.
Signs – 50 poll captains spread out across the riding with signs at their house. Sign requests collected through the website are forwarded to the appropriate captain and the sign is received same day/next day.
Door to Door – nothing can replace the candidate knocking on doors but I can certainly help pave the way in every poll he’s canvassing in by emailing supporters the day before to let them know.
There are many, many more examples of how you can integrate the internet and campaigns. They are not a replacement for a good campaign, simply another tool.
Sorry about that, I must have missed my closing tag on the last link.