“Voter Guide That Follows the Money”

Cool: very worthwhile effort here:

“Can information about which candidates people give money to produce a better voter guide?

One problem with voter guides, despite their worthy intentions and the seriousness of their approach, is that there is rarely a common baseline from which to evaluate two or more candidates. A 30-year incumbent’s record usually dwarfs that of a first-time challenger who has never held office. But those two candidates do have something in common — fund-raising — and that forms the backbone of Crowdpac, a site that aims to produce a data-driven voter guide to help voters decide which candidates to support.

Led by a Stanford political scientist, a former Google business development executive and a former senior adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, Crowdpac takes federal and state campaign finance data — who donates money to whom — and uses that and other details to calculate a political position along a spectrum for candidates. Not only are donations to candidates included, but contributions between candidates and other organizations are also listed….”