It may seem like hardly any time has elapsed since the contentious 2006 U.S. Senate race. That's when then-U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns and current Sen. Jon Tester, their respective political parties and other groups spent millions of dollars on TV ads to bash one candidate or the other.
Now it's a new political season, and the ads are cropping up again. So far, they've been positive ads, but that figures to change down the road.
If it seems as if the political ads are starting to run earlier and earlier, they are. The reason: More and more Montanans are voting absentee and many by mail.
Candidates don't dare wait until the week before the June primary election to launch their television ads. That would be too late to catch many voters. As a result, candidates talk about “front-loading” their ads so they reach the early voters as well as those voting on election day.
Monday is the close of regular voter registration, but people can register any time through Election Day at the county courthouse.
Secretary of State Brad Johnson said the early television advertising is “certainly one of the impacts” of early voting.
“To create some context, in the '06 general election,
40 percent voted by mail,” said Johnson, the state's chief election official. Most of those people are signing up for the permanent absentee list in which they'll be mailed ballots for future elections, if they fill out confirmation cards.
Unless the national Democratic presidential fight between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton ends before Montana's June 3 primary, look for both of them to start running TV ads here soon.
To get ready for the presidential and other races, here are some Web sites that reporters find useful in tracking politics:
Polls. Real Clear Politics provides a way to keep track of the latest poll results between Clinton and Obama in Indiana and North Carolina or to see how either stacks up against the likely Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain. One interesting feature is that the group averages various polls from a variety of sources. It's at www.realclearpolitics.com.
Ad watches. We'll start doing our ad watches when negative or contrast ads start running in the U.S. Senate, House and governor's races.
Three outstanding Web sites have been scrutinizing the presidential candidates' ads the past year to see if their claims are true or false.
One is FactCheck.org by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania: www.factcheck.org. It's run by Brooks Jackson, who popularized ad watches on CNN for a number of years.
Another is PolitiFact, by the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly. It evaluates the accuracy of advertising, with its popular truth-o-meter, which looks like a speedometer, rating the ads as true, mostly true, half true, barely true and false. Outright lies are awarded the dreaded “pants on fire” grade that shows a flame burning the truth-o-meter. It's at www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter.
Another is the Washington Post's Fact Checker at: blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker. It applies “the Pinocchio test,” giving one to four long-nosed Pinocchios for those shading the truth slightly to those lying outright. Ads that stick to the truth get “the Geppetto checkmark.”
Campaign finance. The nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics is the place to go for information on who's giving to which presidential, U.S. Senate and House candidates. You can also see how much has been donated by industry and unions, from ZIP codes, and even check on individual donors. It's at www.opensecrets.org.
Another valuable site is the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group Helena group. It does the same thing for statewide and legislative races and ballot issue campaigns in all 50 states. Montana's information isn't posted until well after elections because the state, for now at least, doesn't have candidates filing electronically. It's at www.followthemoney.org.
Politics in general. Project Vote Smart, a national nonpartisan, nonprofit group based on a ranch outside Philipsburg, has a Web site packed with information from presidential, congressional, gubernatorial and legislative races in all 50 states. It may be found at www.votesmart.org.
Good luck digging.
Johnson is chief of the Lee Newspapers State Bureau in Helena. He can be reached at 1-800-525-4920 or (406) 443-4920. His e-mail address is chuck.johnson@lee.net
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