{"id":148,"date":"2004-03-30T07:33:48","date_gmt":"2004-03-30T07:33:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=148"},"modified":"2004-03-30T07:33:48","modified_gmt":"2004-03-30T07:33:48","slug":"vote_april_6_2004_election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=148","title":{"rendered":"Vote! April 6, 2004 Election"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.google.com\/images?q=tbn:07MpLrJmmloJ:www.bataviajaycees.org\/image\/vote.gif\"><br \/>\nOne week from today, Madison holds its spring election (school board, judges &#038; county board).   However and unfortunately, this race falls during spring break.   If you are planning to be out of town, please obtain an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ci.madison.wi.us\/clerk\/absenVot.html\">absentee ballot from the City Clerk&#8217;s office<\/a>.<br \/>\nSome have asked why I spent the time (and money) to put together <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/election\/\">this web page<\/a>, dedicated to the Madison School Board Race. I&#8217;ve summarized a few reasons here:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>These type of races generally don&#8217;t attract all that much attention.\n<li>There&#8217;s an intersting group of candidates this year.\n<li>Encourage Madison citizens to vote (turnout is never all that great)\n<li>Provide deep, convenient information on each candidate &#8211; as much as possible (four of the six agreed to sit for a video interview, as did Superintendent Art Rainwater &#8211; to his credit.  I requested interviews from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ci.madison.wi.us\/mayor\/mayor.html\">Mayor Dave<\/a> &#038; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?hl=en&#038;ie=UTF-8&#038;oe=UTF-8&#038;q=%22john+matthews%22+madison+teachers&#038;btnG=Google+Search\">John Matthews<\/a>, Executive Director of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.madisonteachers.org\/\">Madison Teachers, Inc.<\/a>, but never heard back from them.).\n<li>General disappointment with the lack of depth in local news coverage from traditional tv &#038; print sources\n<ul>\n<li>My favorite scene:  the local <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbc15.com\">nbc<\/a> affiliate was the only station covering a candidate forum at Cherokee Middle School &#8211; it&#8217;s great they were there for a few minutes, however the end result was a 10 second video clip on the 10 o&#8217;clock news that night.\n<li>The local newspapers, have two education reporters, Doug Erickson &#038; Lee Sensenbrenner.   Lee&#8217;s paper, the afternoon <a href=\"http:\/\/www.madison.com\/captimes\/\">Capital Times<\/a>, has posted most of his articles online (including one with a description of this site, but not a link on the web version), while Doug&#8217;s paper, the morning <a href=\"http:\/\/www.madison.com\/wisconsinstatejournal\/\">Wisconsin State Journal<\/a> has posted very few (Doug&#8217;s candidate interviews have NOT been online, which is just amazing &#8211; <i>correction<\/i>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.madison.com\/wisconsinstatejournal\/elect2004\/electmad\/70387.php\">they are available on this page<\/a>).<\/ul>\n<li>Support these candidates.  Running and serving on the school board is a thankless job.   I wanted to give them an opportunity to express their views without a filter.\n<li>Contribute:  I contributed to four of the six (those who took the time to sit for an interview &#8211; you should, too.  I&#8217;ve posted links to all <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/election\/\">6 candidate web sites here<\/a>.)<\/ul>\n<p>How did it work out?   My election page has received quite a bit of activity.  It&#8217;s also received some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apme.com\/updates\/031604update.html\">interesting comments<\/a>.  I hope other Madison residents start their own blogs&#8230;.  Email me if you have questions (zellmer AT mac.com) Vote!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One week from today, Madison holds its spring election (school board, judges &#038; county board). However and unfortunately, this race falls during spring break. If you are planning to be out of town, please obtain an absentee ballot from the City Clerk&#8217;s office. Some have asked why I spent the time (and money) to put [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}