by Mark Hannah
ElectNext describes its mission like this: “Imagine if you could cast an informed vote in every one of your elections, all the way down your ballot. Rather than relying on party or guesswork, you could choose candidates based on knowledge.”
Despite the nonstop coverage of the ongoing Republican primary battle on cable news and talk radio programs, the American voter remains notoriously ill-informed.
While people may be increasing their attention to the high-profile horse race of presidential politics this year, it’s clear that most voters’ knowledge of local politics has sharply declined. This is doubtless related to the dwindling amount of local news consumption among most Americans. A Pew Research Center report, which I recently cited, found that, for the first time ever, people are regularly getting their campaign news more from national cable news programs than from local television stations, and more from the Internet than from their local newspapers.
