Do You Know Your Candidates’ Positions?

This year’s Congressional elections are officially of the “off-year” or “mid-term” variety, which I find a little disappointing, since without a presidential race I will not have the opportunity to root for my longtime presidential candidate of choice, Vermin Supreme.

Not that there aren’t plenty of incumbents and candidates this election cycle whose positions and prejudices are in the same league of wackiness as would-be President Supreme;  and in their case, it’s a more worrying phenomenon since they are actually serious candidates and don’t seem to be aware of the outlandlishness of their platforms.

However, absent the distraction of an overarching presidential contest, we can focus our attention on the senators and representatives and their challengers who’ll be on the soapbox this Fall.  And it behooves us as responsible voters to know as much as possible before November about their positions on the issues that matter to us.

Here, for those of you who want to hunt down and compare the official statements and independent evidence of contestants’ positions this election season, are several useful resources:

The Solar Nation advocacy page:

1. Go to http://capwiz.com/re-action/home/
2. Click on Find Election info and Candidates
3. Use the ‘My Races’, ‘Find a Candidate’, or ‘Browse Races by State’ box to locate the relevant candidates and incumbents.
4. Click ‘On the issues’ (opens in a new tab);  this will take you off the Solar Nation site to the candidate’s site.

ontheissues.org

1. Go to http://www.ontheissues.org/default.htm
2. To find positions of U.S. senators on every issue from abortion to war & peace (including energy, oil and the environment), click the ‘SENATE’ tab.  For those in election races this year, you will also find the recorded positions of their opponents.
3. To find positions of U.S. representatives, click the ‘HOUSE’ tab.

govtrack.us

1. Go to http://www.govtrack.us/
2. Click on ‘members of congress’ to find your congressional district and U.S. legislators’ names.
3. Click on ‘voting records’ to find how your legislators voted on specific bills.

Project Vote Smart

1. Go to www.votesmart.org/index.htm
2. Enter your legislators’ names or search by zip code.  Read recent key votes.

OR

to find candidates, click ‘candidates’ tab then search.

Bear in mind in all these cases that, typically, more is known of incumbents’ positions on issues than of candidates’ positions.  Incumbents have been in the spotlight for at least two years, have some sort of voting record (one would hope), probably have their own fleshed-out web sites, and (they would hope) have been written about in the press.  Candidates may be more unknown quantities.

Do you know of any other resources for learning about legislators’ positions on issues that matter to you?  Share them with us below!