Republicans Vs. Democrats — Part 1

Yet another wind bag infested elec­tion cycle is com­ing, and with it a whole new crop of ter­ri­ble polit­i­cal web­sites.  Some cam­paigns get it, and make spec­tac­u­lar web­sites.  These are not those cam­paigns.  Look­ing at these, it’s no won­der we run a sick­en­ing deficit in almost every state, and politi­cians seem to have dif­fi­culty tying their own shoes.

Before fans of the politi­cians in ques­tion go off about how I’m anti this, or pro that, the only thing I care about is design.  I don’t care what your party is, I don’t care what you’re run­ning for, I don’t care what your hat size is.  You need to real­ize your site is the face of your cam­paign.  If you can’t take that seri­ously, be pre­pared to have some stuff said about you that you may not like.

Check this guy out.  He’s run­ning for a seat in the US House.  You’d fig­ure a house run war­rants a bit more design than glue and mag­a­zine clip­pings.  Not this guy.  Let’s hope this page is a place holder because I’d hate to elect a guy this dis­or­ga­nized to Fed­eral office.  His ideas may be great, I just can’t get past the web­site to take him seri­ously.  Do-it-yourselfers are funny, and so are their attempts at web presence.

This one, at first glance made my head spin.  It reminded me of some­thing a come­dian would do as a joke.  I was right about the come­dian part, but the joke is on him.  He is a come­dian, and has a fol­low­ing.  So why on earth would he sub­ject us to this back­ground?  If he’s seri­ous about run­ning, maybe he should hire a web guy.  Any­thing is bet­ter than this.  It just hurts to look at it.  He must have taken lessons from miauk.

This poor guy went with one of those polit­i­cal web­site ser­vices.  You’d fig­ure a “ser­vice” would be able to insure the text didn’t lay on top of itself, but you’d fig­ure wrong.  The site itself is pass­able, but if you can’t read what a can­di­date says, are you going to vote for him?  I’m not.  I’m also not using this ser­vice, based on the results I see.  I love the idea of hav­ing to copy and paste just to see where my can­di­date stands on the issues.

I’m hop­ing that this one (hell, all of these) is a work in progress.  I would think any­one run­ning for an office like Gov­er­nor would be able to afford a web designer, but I guess I’m wrong on that one.  Even a mediocre designer can be hired for a few hun­dred bucks, so what’s the deal with a brown site and all bold text?  I have decent eye site, but am I the only one who has trou­ble with the links being micro­scopic?  Not get­ting my vote…

I don’t even know what to say about this one.  Steal­ing the “We Like Ike” cam­paign slo­gan is fine, but what on earth is going on with that pic­ture?  The main prob­lem I have is, why bother with an under con­struc­tion mes­sage?   Don’t put any­thing there if you have noth­ing to say.  If it takes you longer than a day to pop­u­late your site with your polit­i­cal mes­sage, you shouldn’t be running.

I can’t fig­ure out what the hell is going on here, but aren’t Democ­rats typ­i­cally the more “Mac” friendly crowd?  Lib­er­als usu­ally have more of an eye for design than this (yes, I’m stereo­typ­ing, get over it).  I’m at a loss as far as the lay­out (and I use that term lightly).  I have no idea what they were shoot­ing for, but they missed…  By an insane mar­gin, they missed.  Is there even a design in there?  If you find it, let me know.  Also, if you use free host­ing, just shoot your­self.  If you can’t afford $5.00 a month maybe a web­site isn’t for you…

Prob­a­bly worse than a crappy guber­na­to­r­ial web­site is a crappy sen­ate web­site.  Here’s a hint…  If you oppo­nent has a web­site and yours is more than 10% crap­pier than his, you’re going to lose.  Run­ning for Sen­ate is some­thing done by mostly rich folks, and rich folks buy decent web­sites.  If you want to look like you have no money, do your web­site your­self, or have your cousin Jimmy do it.  You know Jimmy, the kid Grandma thinks is just a wiz on the com­puter?  He can’t make web­sites, so stop let­ting him.

Make sure you check out the “pres­room” page of this guy’s site.  He’s the CURRENT gov­er­nor of the state of Nevada.  Go back and read that again.  Yeah, cur­rent, elected, gov­er­nor…  You’d fig­ure that as a gov­er­nor, you’d be able to afford a decent web­site, but if you can’t, at least put some­thing other than “Under Con­struc­tion” on it (You’ve had 3 freakin’ years, pal).  If you have noth­ing to put there, don’t put the page up.  Did I men­tion that he’s the gov­er­nor?  Oh, and hey…  Aspect ratios, espe­cially on your offi­cial photo…  Yeah, they’re impor­tant…  No excuse, folks.

I was ready to for­give this guy con­sid­er­ing he’s a city coun­cil can­di­date.  You have to fig­ure they have less to spend and less time to work.  Then I noticed the ani­mated gif of a wav­ing flag and the fact that he used Front­Page 6 to make the site.  So much for civil­ity.  There’s a les­son to be learned here.  Don’t do what he did.

This is vol­ume one, and peo­ple keep send­ing them.  If you have one, by all means let me know.  These guys need to under­stand how their web­sites make them look.  Here’s a hint…  The phrase “not good” doesn’t begin to cover it.  What’s sad is, even a lousy Word­Press theme makes all these sites look like microwaved dog shit.  What the hell were they think­ing when they gave a thumbs up?  Have they seen another web­site before?  Any web­site?  I guess there’s no account­ing for taste.

Stick around, there are some worse ones com­ing up.

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