The following is taken from the online Santa Cruz County, CA Ballot (as provided by SmartVoter.Org:
| US Representative |
United States Representative; District 17
- Sam Farr, Democratic
- Anthony R. De Maio, Republican
Please notice that the Republican candidate, Mr. De Maio, has no links. Mr. De Maio has submitted nothing to any of the online voting resources. Nothing. Nada. A Google search of Mr. De Maio also turns up nearly nothing. Mr. De Maio apparently did not submit anything to Project Vote Smart. Open Secrets has no record of his campaign funding. Voters First Pledge, no response. Monterey County Republican Party web page? You guessed it.
No where. Nothing. Nada. I’m half tempted to send him an email to see if he’s actually running for office or if it was just a joke. But the sad fact is, the joke is on us, the voters. With only two candidates running in this particular district and one of them MIA by all appearances, the ramifications are significant.
- Vote for Sam Farr
- Vote for Anthony De Maio
- Vote for Neither
Option 1 is simple. A vote for Sam Farr is a vote for Sam Farr. He is the incumbent. We could say that a vote for Sam Farr is a vote against Mr. De Maio but that would only make sense in the expectation that Mr. De Maio were going to win.
Option 2 is more complicated. One might vote for Mr. De Maio because they want him to win. One might vote for Mr. De Maio because they want Mr. Farr to lose. One might be more inclined to vote for Mr. De Maio if we knew something about him. Since he has not provided any information to any of what are now considered standard sources of information on candidates, issues and propositions finding out whether Mr. De Maio is a candidate that one would vote for is much more difficult or even impossible.
Theoretically, we should vote for candidates that represent our views and will vote, for the most part, in accordance with our views. Given that Mr. De Maio has chosen not to provide any information about himself or his political views, he has made it impossible or at least very difficult to vote for him on the basis of his views. Which brings us to option 3. For those voters who do not agree with Mr. Farr’s political posture and have not been able to find out anything about Mr. De Maio’s political posture, the only honest option is option 3. Which is, effectively, a vote for Mr. Farr albeit a vote that at least reduces any notion of a mandate.
I single out Mr. De Maio but in fact it amazes me how many candidates do not take the time to develop their presence on the web. Developing a cohesive web campaign strategy is paramount in winning the under 50 vote.
America uses the web!
Aloha
[posted with ecto]