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Friday, May 26, 2006

Five questions for council candidates

The City Beat spent last week interviewing candidates for Grand Forks City Council and, frankly, they're all starting to sound alike.

I knew this would happen. Who doesn't want to cut property taxes this year?

So, to set these candidates apart, I decided to throw in a little political philosophy. All the candidates were given five statements, which they had to rank from 1 to 6, 1 being complete disagreement and 6 being complete agreement.

The statements are as follows:

1) The city should not provide services that the private sector can provide.
2) More mills must be cut even if that means reducing services.
3) The answer to a social problem is new laws.
4) Charging fees for services ("pay-to-play") is more fair than using tax dollars.
5) The current city government is open and transparent.

Here's how the candidates replied.

Just to amuse myself, I divided the statements into "conservative" and "liberal," ignoring the fifth one, which is neither. Then I graphed the candidates' answers and named the graph "Who's most conservative?" Don't take it seriously, I was just fooling around. Labels are stupid.

The idea came from some political orientation tests I'd taken in the past. The tests are supposed demonstrate that "conservative" and "liberal" aren't nuanced enough to describe a person's true political leanings. One example is the test at the Political Compass Web site. I took the test and it says I'm a Commie, just like Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.

10 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good stuff! I'm surprised at how conservative Rice is (at least based on the informal survey and data).

9:52 PM  
Blogger GrandForksGuy said...

Great work, Tu-Uyen! Will the Herald be printing some sort of interview with each candidate? I hope so.

1:28 AM  
Blogger GrandForksGuy said...

Oh, I see you've done something along those lines in today's paper. Even though I can't vote for any of these guys (wrong ward), I'm pretty sure I know who I will be rooting for in the races.

3:37 AM  
Blogger GrandForksGuy said...

I'm curious, who do you feel has the most support in candidate-crowded ward 2? Or maybe you're not supposed to say...

3:38 AM  
Blogger elucidarian said...

Maybe that "pay-to-play" philosophy should go toward all operations run on taxes:

Want to go to war with a foreign nation? Need those potholes taken care of? Does your congressman deserve a raise (I mean, really)?

Wait no further, log in and check the corresponding boxes to dictate where your tax money goes!

9:44 AM  
Blogger elucidarian said...

Sorry 'bout the tangent.

9:45 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think it's unfortunate that Gershman is running unopposed. Was he not included in yoour survey because of it?

Thanks.

10:36 AM  
Blogger Tu-Uyen said...

Holy heck! Lots of discussions! And questions.

1) Who's gonna win Ward 2? I honestly don't know. But if I were to speculate, I'd say that the probabilities are highest for McNamara, Kenville, Dorner, Rice and then Stewart. This doesn't reflect my personal preference, just name recognition, demographic (e.g., it's hard to see a student win office with most of them leaving town for the summer) and how articulate the candidates are.

2) Why'd I skip Gershman? He's unopposed and it seemed kinda pointless. But I guess I was wrong because people are still curious.

3) The pay-to-play scheme appeared to be the most fair, but, I don't think it would work real well if all government functions were done that way.

One reason we have government is because there are some things that none of us would want to pay for but all of us would benefit. By coercing everyone to pay, you eliminate free riders. A pacifist who doesn't want to pay for an army is still protected because an army can't protect everyone but pacifists.

2:43 PM  
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11:36 AM  

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