PCT Department Management
Prioritization
Be aware of deadlines, elections, and press release dates when prioritizing various responsibilities across the departmentIn general the priorities are:
- Preserving Our Integrity (correcting any problem with data on our live websites that misrepresent candidates, responding to candidates requests and concerns in a timely manner, responding to Candidate Attacks quickly and effectively, making sure every candidate gets the appropriate amount of contacts during their testing period)
- Getting as Much Information Out to the Voters as Possible, as Soon as Possible, and With as Much Publicity as Possible (Within every task, priority is always Presidential, then Congressional, then Gubernatorial, then State Legislative, then StateWide, then State Judicial.).
- making sure our website mirrors the ballot, as every other task depends on that
- issue positions are the most valuable information to voters, so we prioritize releases of PCT results, including submitted PCTs and VoteEasy research. Updates of VoteEasy Research, however, are not as high priority unless the determinations on the live site are incorrect, and must be appropriately balanced with other tasks we are working on.
- all things for Congressional and Presidential so that VoteEasy is complete
- submitted bios
- researched bios
- photos
After the election, our priority will shift pretty much entirely to election results, putting election winners into office, redoing all of our manuals, doing end of the year reports, and planning for the next election cycle's elections
General Tips
- Be as prepared as you can for upcoming tasks to make sure deadlines are met.
- Be sure everyone in the department is communicating and knows the status of various tasks
- Be strict about deadlines. Once you miss one, it will set the rest of the deadlines back.
- Encourage people to come to you right away if they make a mistake or find a mistake. Mistakes will happen, but you will need to know about them promptly to resolve them
- Shift resources as necessary to meet objectives. Make sure QC never gets behind, and is ideally is being more attentive than they are required to me. QC is the foundation in which all other PCT departments (and some of the Research Department, and many of our high-profile API users) relies on, so being behind in this one area has a cascading effect in other areas.
Election Year Audit:
The following audit was constructed
project manage VoteEasy project (see Director responsibilities doc
PCT Administration
- review and submit for approval all template communications, including but not limited to: template press releases, Bulk Communication Templates, NPAT messages, website changes
- Personally ensure each major Presidential candidates and Board Members running for office are getting fairly tested with the PCT and appropriately contacted
- ensure politicalcourage@ account is cleared and all action has been followed up on
QC
- ensure the roster of candidates in Presidential VoteEasy is updated
- ensure election results are processed promptly after the election and that eventually winners are advanced into office properly
- ensure submitted pcts and bios and candidate lists are being processed promptly
- ensure candidate coverage is in line with this page: http://wiki.votesmart.org/PCTProcessesOverview
- ensure, before elections, all elections and candidates are release, all pcts are released, all VoteEasy states released
- check in on exception candidates and ensure they have all been treated appropriately as defined here: http://wiki.votesmart.org/ExceptionCandidates
- ensure Adelaide or another person approved by Richard is signing off on all press releases and candidate fight advisories
- communicate with PCT Advisors
Do we have the interns and staff secured needed to meet all deadlines
VoteEasy Quality Review:
- randomly select at least 5 candidates for evaluation across offices (each chamber of Congress and President), locality (different states and districts) and incumbency statuses (incumbents, challengers, state incumbents running for federal office). Add to your list at least one high-profile candidate that is known to have a mixed record, and all of the most major Presidential candidates.
- assess research variety and completeness- evaluate the variety of research used in citations
- assess the accuracy of issue position determinations
Positions are not assigned unless the evidence is clear and directly related to the PCT question. This leads to "Unknown" positions for some issues among challengers but, given the lack of evidence for these candidates, this seems the most defensible approach. In terms of process, all determinations receive at least 2 staff checks, including the PCT Director. I am confident in our diligence and conservative determinations.
Evidence for incumbent positions is varied across the relevant categories: Speeches, Votes, Ratings, and past PCT results. Researchers may use Campaign Finance and Biographical data to help their research, however linking users to these pages would not be useful given our current web design. We also cite current news sources.
It is more difficult to include evidence besides Speeches and news sources for challengers (especially those who have never held office). Ratings data typically correlates with voting records. We do utilize data from groups that rate candidates on their positions (such as the NRA) but these are sparse. Key Votes are obviously out of the picture for these challengers. For that reason, most of their cited evidence come from Speeches and news. Donald Trump is a great example: his record is evidenced by Speeches and news sources. I am confident in all 15 of our determinations for Trump (including two "Unknown" positions) given the clarity of the evidence PCT staff have identified. Our determinations are necessarily conservative for challengers because we lack as large a data set as for incumbents.
