It’s that time of year again:  the municipal election.  Candidates will soon be slogging through forums and questionnaires, doorsteps will be littered with fliers and advertising, ballots will be arriving in the mail, and voters will be trying to sort through mountains of information on the candidates and issues.  This year, the Blue Line is going to try to make it a little bit easier for everyone.

Our new Election 2011 section will have a number of features for voters and candidates.  Take a look at what we have to offer and check back often for updates.

Register to Vote or Update Your Registration

This election will be conducted strictly via mail-in ballot.  Is your registration up-to-date?  Will your ballot be sent to the correct address?  Thanks to the good people at New Era Colorado, you may register to vote or update your registration via a link on the Blue Line.

Participate in the Community Questionnaire

During the last election, City Council candidates received questionnaires from dozens of separate organizations.  Their answers to those questions were then posted at dozens of separate places, if they were posted at all, making it very difficult for voters to get a comprehensive view of what a candidate is all about.  This time, the Blue Line is hoping to do it differently, making it less burdensome for the candidates and easier for voters to get information.  We’re hosting an on-line Community Questionnaire that everyone can see and we’re making the candidates’ responses available for everyone to read.

The Community Questionnaire will combine questions from as many local organizations as possible to cover a broad range of issues and perspectives.  So far, participating organizations include:

• Boulder Outdoor Coalition (representing Boulder Mountain Bike Alliance, Boulder Area Trails Coalition, Friends Interested in Dogs and Open Space, Boulder Trail Runners, Flatirons Climbing Council, and Connection Ecology)
• Boulder Weekly
• Community Cycles
• Community Foundation Serving Boulder County
• Foothills United Way
• Friends of Boulder Open Space
• Human Services Alliance
• New Era Colorado
• PLAN-Boulder County
• Prairie Dog Coalition
• Sierra Club

If your organization would like to participate, please contact us, we would love to have you on board.  The deadline for questions submitted by organizations is fast approaching (August 29) so please contact us as soon as you can.

Compare Candidate Responses

Voters and organizations preparing endorsements will be able to read and compare candidates’ responses to the Community Questionnaire via the Blue Line.  Instead of scanning through pages and pages of multiple pdfs, you will be able to select a topic of your choice and find out where a particular candidate, or all the candidates, stands on that topic.  Look for this feature in mid-September.

Read Candidate Interviews

Watch the Blue Line for exclusive interviews and articles with City Council candidates. Students in the newly-formed Program of Journalism and Mass Communication at CU-Boulder will provide written articles, video interviews and more. As part of a multi-media assignment, students in instructor Christine Mahoney’s Radio/TV News Writing course (J-3604) will focus on candidate platforms and views. Look for articles and corresponding video clips from these budding journalists.

Support the Blue Line

The Blue Line has topped 22,000 unique visitors, with over 500 articles posted by about 100 authors.  We’re pretty proud of how far we’ve come as an all-volunteer, non-profit organization.  We try to offer fresh, relevant content as often as possible, and we’re very excited about the election coverage we’ll be providing.  We could do even more with your support.  How can you help?

Become a community author

• Share your expertise – the feedback we receive is that our readers enjoy articles that help them understand issues that are otherwise not covered in sufficient depth in other media.  If you have a particular area of expertise and can offer information or perspectives that fill a gap, please send it to the Blue Line.
• Be a reporter – we have a couple of folks who attend public meetings and write them up for the Blue Line.  This is a huge community service and very welcome content.  Please consider taking notes and writing up the next public meeting you attend.
• Issue your Call to Action – community members often have a particular issue that is coming up before City Council, the County Commissioners or other agency and they want to raise awareness and turn out speakers.  Write it up and send it in!  No astroturf, please.
• Announce your cultural or neighborhood event – write it up and send it in.  We’ll publish it under your byline.

Support the community authors

• Comment on articles – if you read something that you want to respond to, please comment.  Our authors want to know that you’ve read their pieces and what you think of them.  We ask that you log in first in an effort to prevent anonymous Internet trolls.
• Give feedback – we love feedback!  Please contact us whenever you are inclined.  If you have feedback for an author, we’re happy to forward it to the author for you.
• Rate articles – if you read an article that you like (or don’t like!) and want to remain anonymous, rate it using the star system at the end of the article.
• Share articles – if you’re on Facebook, share Blue Line articles with your friends by clicking the Facebook icon at the end of the piece.

Support the site

• Become a fan – the Blue Line has a Facebook page.  Like it!
• Subscribe to our mailing list – get the latest original content in your email, once per day.  Sign up here.
• Become Sponsor of the Month – we operate on the tiniest of budgets, using volunteer labor, open-source software, free email services, and royalty-free images as much as possible.  But we still pay for webhosting services, stock images when free ones aren’t available, and occasional small gifts to Blue Line community authors.  Become a Sponsor of the Month by donating $30 and be featured on our home page.
• Just plain donate – if you like the Blue Line but don’t want your picture on the home page, just make a donation.  Every little bit helps.

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