The political courage test

Project Vote Smart is a non-partisan organization that, according to their website, is about "A battle to protect all of us from the selfish interests that strip us of the most crucial component in our struggle to self-govern -- access to abundant, accurate, and relevant information."  Which is short hand for a bunch of do-gooders mucking up the process by expecting politicians to actually answer questions in writing and publishing how they vote on stuff. 

Imagine.

One of the dreadful things they do is ask politicians to fill out a lengthy questionnaire.   It used to have some benign sounding name, however, in the interest of maintaining their do-gooder status they renamed it the "Political Courage Test"

Annoying.

The group describes the test as follows, "The Political Courage Test asks candidates which items they will support if elected. It does not ask them to indicate which items they will oppose. Through extensive research of public polling data, we discovered that voters are more concerned with what candidates would support when elected to office, not what they oppose. If a candidate does not select a response to any part or all of any question, it does not necessarily indicate that the candidate is opposed to that particular item."

The test includes questions on guns, abortion, welfare, immigration, energy and environment issues and many others.  So, basically stuff that no one cares about....

In Maine, only two candidates have found the time to complete the survey, Senator Collins who is running for reelection against Congressman Tom Allen and Chellie Pingree, who is running against Charlie Summers in the First Congressional District.

Take a look at the Project Vote Smart website and if you think candidates in Maine should fill out the Political Courage Test, let them know.