29 March 2016

Guerrilla campaigning — websites for cannon fodder candidates

Remember the text heavy, black-and-white, one-third page campaign card? Unless you’ve been around long enough to remember dial telephones, you might not. Today’s political propaganda — websites included — dazzles with glossy color, often while glossing over inconvenient details.

For a political party’s chosen, the candidates who can win, the chroma, gloss, and gloss overs, are provided by professionals with access to sophisticated social science research (see Issenberg’s The Victory Lab).

Not so for the party’s cannon fodder candidates, the loyal souls who run in hopeless districts. They won’t get much help, especially in designing useful websites. “Use Facebook and Twitter,” they’re told, then turned loose to fend for themselves. At best, they’re condemned to generic designs offered at a discount to discourage deviations from the party’s message. It’s triage, although that’s seldom admitted.

But even cannon fodder candidates need campaign websites in addition to Facebook pages and Twitter account. Websites anchor social media and serve as the campaign’s library and communications central.

There are all kinds of do-it-yourself solutions — Weebly, WordPress, ruck.us, your brother-in-law’s-nephew. Some are turnkey, others are kits with vague instructions. The domain name always requires greenbacks. So, usually does the hosting plan. And some hosting plans that seem free really are not. For example, ruck.us takes a bite out of your online fundraising:

The one-third-page card paradigm

Most canned designs display well on smartphones, an important consideration, thanks to a coding practice called responsive design. Old fogies like me prefer big desktop screens (I dabble in graphic arts, and have two large LCD displays), but by some reckonings as many as two of three internet visitors view websites on their smart phones. Thus designing for the smartphone makes sense — and can fit perfectly into the one-third-page card paradigm. Unfortunately, responsive design websites that display well on smartphones frequently spread across a desktop’s display like unconstrained urban sprawl.

But a website can be designed to appear like a one-third-page card on tablets, laptops, and desktops, as well as on smartphones. Here’s an example I designed for Joe Grandmush of the Hot Lunch Party. The frame below simulates Joe’s website on a smartphone, while clicking on this link displays the desktop version. Note: only the menu links and platform PDF link are active. Below the smartphone frame, some comments on content.

Joe’s card style website has ten sections:

1. The banner. Joe’s name, the office for which he’s running, and the political party to which he belongs.
2. Menu. Links to sections. Necessary for smartphones.
3. Mug shot of Joe. His standard campaign photo. He's looking at you, and you will recognize him when you meet him on the street.
4. Why Joe's running. And why his opponent should be voted out of office. The case against the incumbent is a download.
5. About Joe. Bullet points, not a prose narrative. More detailed information is in the downloadable bio.
6. Joe's issues. Again, bullet points, not a narrative. Detailed positions are in the downloadable platform.
7. How to help. Volunteer recruitment pitch. The tasks that win campaigns, contact info, and a promise of a good time as part of Team Joe.
8. Donate. A casual beg for bucks, which can be delivered via credit card online via the supplied link or by snail mail check.
9. Contact. Phone, email, followed by links to Facebook and Twitter.
10. Legal information. Whatever's required by law.

Joe’s website is simple enough that if his brother-in-law’s nephew has a rudimentary understanding of HTML, he can insert’s Joe’s information into the website’s HTML framework in an hour or so.

Is the template for Joe’s website available for other candidates? Not yet. I’m still refining it. It’s passed syntax checks and performed satisfactorily on Google’s PageSpeed test. It’s copyrighted. If there’s any interest in it, I’ll examine options for making it available in a way that helps cannon fodder candidates.