Political parties to voters: We could tell you where your caucus will be, but then we’d have to kill you.
With Hillary and Obama now locked in a battle royale for the Democratic nomination and a four-way battle setting up for the Republican nod, it’s looking plausible that Washington’s caucuses, held on the Saturday after Super Duper Mega Hyper Fat (Shrove) Tuesday, might just be important enough to attend. Maybe.
So, where is your precinct caucus going to be held? Why, that’s a great question. I bet the state political party websites can tell me. Let’s go find out.
Democrats
Well, hey, there’s a big “Click Here To Find Your Caucus Location” button right there on the front of the site! This should be easy. And I just happen to know my precinct number (yeah, I’m a little nebbish like that). So, let’s put that in.
What the…? “Caucus Lookup Error: 300 no matching caucus location found”?
Okay… let’s try my name. And, no records, even though I’ve been registered to vote here for 12 years. Wonderful.
Hmm. Let’s try King County’s party site.
“You can look up your caucus location at the Washington State Democrats website by simply putting in your last name and zip code,” they say. Yeah, been there, done that, couldn’t buy the t-shirt because NO ONE CHECKED TO SEE IF IT WORKED.
There’s one more option — I seem to remember that the 46th District, too, has its own website. So let’s head there… and look what’s under the fold:
We are building a set of pages about the 2008 Caucus Cycle. This will include a map of the caucus locations, a page to view those locations in a table sorted by precinct or location, and contact information for each of the Presidential Campaigns. If you have any questions or suggestions, please ask and comment!
OK! We’re in business. And here tis: 46-2228 meets at Wilson Pacific School. That only took three websites and a boatload of errors to pull off.
Nice going on being “user-friendly,” Dems. It’s not like 80% OF THIS TOWN isn’t going to be USING THE WEB to try to find a DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS. I mean, what TRUE BLEEDIN’ HEART LIBERAL would EVER USE THE WEB? I mean, it’s not like they ever blog or use it to do grassroots organization. Heck, the special interest groups that are associated with the party, like pro-choice orgs and environmental groups, THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE WEBSITES!
Obama, Mary, and Joseph and all the angels and saints! It’s TWO THOUSAND AND EIGHT ALREADY. DO YOU EVEN THINK TO DO A LICK OF ERROR CHECKING? HELL, THE STUPID FORM PAGE ISN’T EVEN ACCESSIBLE OR STANDARDS COMPLIANT AND IT’S THROWING A JAVASCRIPT ERROR.
Hmm. Inaccessible, not standards compliant, and throwing a JavaScript error. Now there’s an attack ad waiting to happen. But let’s see if the GOP can do any better with their search first.
Overall grade: D- (saved from an F by the 46th actually having a sensible web person, but a big fat goose egg to the state party)
Republicans
OK, Republicans, you who want to drown the government in a bathtub and think free enterprise can save us all. Let’s see how you do.
State party home page says “Contact your county party for caucus locations.” Hey, at least you’re honest. We have no clue! We don’t do the scheduling! We outsource! Halliburton is doing the caucuses and it only cost the taxpayers $173 billion!
So let’s click there, click on King… HEY! A CAUCUS LOCATOR LINK!
Now, the proof of the monocultural pudding — does it know where my caucus meets?
IT DOES!!! PRAISE HUCKABEE!!!
Wait. I knew my precinct number. What if I didn’t? Oh, look — a link to the KING COUNTY VOTER DATABASE LOOKUP! WELL CUT MY TAXES AND SHOOT THE WELFARE MOTHERS, THE COUNTY REPUBLICANS GET IT! THEY KNOW HOW TO BUILD A CAUCUS LOOKUP SYSTEM!
OK, mind you, they’re using an HTML table instead of divs for markup (come on y’all, tables are soooo 2001), they’re using iframe to include the search form that’s running on another domain (haven’t you guys heard of AJAX?), and the iframe doesn’t look like it meets 508 accessibility standards, but hey, the page does validate as XHTML 1.0. And even though they can’t offer the state-level search form (poor Pierce County Republicans have to parse THIS mess to try and find their caucus… or anything), I guess the King County GOP is trying… unlike a certain OTHER party in this town.
Overall grade: C (A for King County, but get something working statewide, people, and send some of the KCGOP down to Tacoma and save them from that abomination of a website)
Conclusion
At least the Republicans were honest about where to get the information, and if you’re in King County, you know where to go. But they can do better. As for the Dems, get with the program already, it’s 2008. In a town that’s stacked 20-deep in left-leaning web designers and developers, you’d think the Democrats would understand the concept of functioning and functional websites (or find someone that does), but apparently, they can’t.
The Washington State Democratic Party. Inaccessible, not standards compliant, and throwing a JavaScript error.
I had similar problems with the Dems page, but was lucky enough that it worked with my name and zip.
I, like you, was using a numeric precinct number (05-0546 in my case), but when I used the KC voter lookup thingy the Repubs linked to it showed “ISS 05-0546″ which worked on the Dems site.
I fired an email off to the Dems suggesting they make their matching a little fuzzier.
I tried the Dems, but not by precinct number (I haven’t the faintest idea!) — the last name/zip code combo worked fine, if a little creepy.
Maybe they should just take out the precinct number search, since only freaking nerds (no offense) know that stuff, and apparently it’s “not trivial” to do that sort of matching.
What would’ve been extra-cool (okay, besides, you know, modern web techniques) would’ve been a Google map or something.
Thurston Co. Repubs want you to sign up for their newsletter (!) to find out where the caucus locations are. Uh, no. (mmmm, nice Dreamweaver template y’all’ve got there.)
Which sent me off to Thurston Co. Dems, out of curiosity rather than necessity…I think I actually know their web guy. Drupal goodness. Actually, I think all the HTML errors are Drupal-ish in origin.
Their precinct lookup looks a lot like the KC Repubs, plus the locations are linked to…Google maps! Not too bad.
It’s right here, you whining little prat, and it has been there for at least three weeks now, and that information has been posted all over hell and gone.
Click here.
I navigated the same mess…
I’m not done. The precinct caucus information is the product of thousands of volunteers from all over the state. It has to be verified six ways from Sunday before it is posted.
This was done, and the information has been posted, FOUR WEEKS before the caucuses are to be held.
But that’s not enough for some little “I-Me-Mine” weenies, is it? Because after all, the whole world exists to gratify them, doesn’t it?
You know, I probably shouldn’t humor a well-known troller of the local political blogs, but he’s waaaay off this time.
that information has been posted all over hell and gone.
Actually, Google says that link has only been linked to in exactly one place. According to the OED, that doesn’t qualify as “hell and gone.”
This was done, and the information has been posted, FOUR WEEKS before the caucuses are to be held.
Well, yeah. Why else wouldn’t I get an e-mail from Dwight Pelz earlier this week telling me that (which spawned this entire post)?
And again, this link doesn’t return anything when you put in a KingCo precinct number.
So, that doesn’t work, but Mr. Grumpysocks up there thinks that I should just be able to dig the answers out of some obscure Democratic website so why do I even need the tool the state party even provides?
The advertised tool doesn’t work, and it’s my fault for complaining. Sounds like our troller is a neo-con through and through.