Please describe yourself BY AL DIAMON

It’s tricky sorting out good people from bad people. If only there were a Web site that rated everybody in Maine on such criteria as whether they’re operating a scheme from the state medical examiner’s office to sell dead people’s brains to out-of-state research firms or whether they’re running an absentee-ballot scam in order to elect a Green Party legislative candidate in Biddeford or whether they have a longer criminal record than Carol Palesky.

Unfortunately, no such Web page exists, which makes life particularly difficult in an election year, when many of us are trying to figure out who we’ll support for the Legislature by separating the proteins from the carbs.

Which state House and Senate hopefuls would set aside partisanship to work for tax reform, a sensible budget, and earlier starting times for World Series games? Which would cling to outmoded ideas, such as unfettered state-spending increases, higher taxes on alcohol, and John Martin for state Senate president?

It’s almost impossible to say, mostly because legislative candidates are reluctant to fill out questionnaires from special-interest groups seeking to rate them on how well they adhere to particular agendas. Campaign advisers caution politicians against submitting those forms, arguing they might lose control of their message. What that really means is they’re afraid taking a stand would cost them votes. Better to pretend to be all things to all people and hope nobody notices the lack of specifics until the ballots are counted.

For this reason, even sites such as the non-partisan Project Vote Smart (www.vote-smart.org) are nearly useless. Too many candidates refuse to answer its questions, fearing the opposition will seize on even the vaguest approximation of a position to attack them.

Participation is even more meager in surveys conducted by extremist advocacy groups, although you can learn something from the Christian Civic League of Maine’s voters’ guide (www.cclmaine.org). Since most candidates who responded agree with the league’s agenda (make homosexuality a crime, bring back Prohibition, outlaw birth control), it helps sort out the kooks.

Some special interests skip the questionnaires and instead compile lists of legislators’ voting records. The Maine League of Conservation Voters’ site (www.mlcv.org) includes environmental roll calls dating back a decade and ratings of current and former legislators. While this page makes it easy to determine if a representative or senator voted for or against the league’s positions, it takes a fair amount of cross-checking to figure out what issue was actually being decided by each vote. And the conservation voters make no attempt to determine how candidates who’ve never served in the Legislature stand on the same issues, so the site isn’t much help with challengers or those running for open seats.

Better is the Family Planning Association of Maine’s Web page (www.knowyourcandidate.com), which provides a reasonably objective explanation of each bill dealing with abortion and reproductive health, as well as showing how every legislator voted. Family Planning also lists all challengers and their contact information, but, unfortunately, the site doesn’t offer any clues as to whether they’re pro-life or pro-choice. I guess you have to call them yourself.

If gun control is a major issue for you, the Web provides only limited help. Maine Citizens Against Handgun Violence’s site (www.mcahv.org) doesn’t appear to have been updated in more than a year. The Sportsmen’s Alliance of Maine’s political action committee has an up-to-date page (www.samcef.org) showing the candidates the group endorsed, but it doesn’t mention the unendorsed rejects, some of whom are as pro-gun as those in SAM’s club.

Finally, there’s the Web site for the Maine Economic Research Institute (www.fixmaine.com), a business-oriented think tank. MERI (a cheerful acronym for a group made up of management types who have proclaimed themselves "very pessimistic" about the state’s economy) tracks more legislative roll calls than anyone else. The institute could have left it at that, but decided to add ratings for every legislator (which are displayed more prominently than the actual votes).

These numbers are suspiciously subjective, perhaps because they’re derived in part from spin provided by a select group of "governmental affairs specialists," a euphemism for business lobbyists. Most of these people are Republicans, so it’s no surprise the MERI numbers always tilt strongly in favor of the GOP. For less biased information, skip the ratings, and use MERI’s extensive research to check out how your legislators voted on bills that matter to you.

In short, going on line is not going to be as much help as it ought to be in sorting out the good people running for the Legislature from the bad. It might be more realistic to hope for a Web site that sorted out the good Web sites from the bad.

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