Back in July when I created LibertarianPartyCandidates.us, my goal was to help LP candidates get a little more exposure. The national LP was busy with ballot access and people were upset that only a select few candidates were listed on lp.org. I was eager to be a part of the fight for liberty.
I’d Call it a Success
Little did I know how great this project would turn out. As you can see in the stats to the right, the site got over 20,000 page views and nearly 11,000 unique visitors in October alone. A handful of visitors – journalists and voters – emailed me asking for more information. The site’s 550+ pages quickly climbed to the tops of search results in Google and other search engines. In just three months, it went from a Google PageRank of 0 to 3. That’s not bad for five days of Django customizations, research and data entry.
Room for Improvement
Of course, there’s always room for improvement. Some things I will do differently in 2009 and beyond include:
- Work with the national LP staff for mutual advantage and to eliminate any duplicate efforts.
- Get messages posted regularly to the state LP mailing list encouraging state chairs to share information on their candidates.
- Email the candidates themselves regularly asking for further information I can post and any help in finding additional candidates for listing.
Websites for Candidates
By 2010 at the latest, I’d also like to offer basic websites for free to candidates. I got some negative feedback on my original idea of offering it as a service (which I don’t understand), so I’d like to start out with a free option that will meet most candidates’ needs.
Recruiting
This website could also be used to recruit Libertarian Party candidates. With help from people experienced in recruiting, running campaigns and such, we could set up a section with videos, how-to’s and step by step guides that would rank well in Google. I’d love to work on this!
LP Office Holders
Someone emailed me offering to put together a list of Libertarian Party officeholders worldwide if I would publish the data online. I’m still looking forward to adding this to the project, too!
The Official LP List
Here is the official LP list, which Sean Haugh shared with me. It has more candidates than LibertarianPartyCandidates.us.
Official LP list of Candidates for 2008Open to Suggestions
If you have any suggestions for how to build this project for the future, I’m all ears. Please share your comments below.
Photo credit: hjl. Photo license.
8 replies on “How the Libertarian Party Candidates Project Turned out”
Hello, I stumbled across your website today. Perhaps we should consider chatting on the phone? I’m Austin Petersen, the Volunteer Coordinator at the Libertarian National Committee. I like your website and I am glad to see you taking an active role in promoting our candidates. Keep up the great work!
Austin Petersen
Hey Austin, I would love to chat with you. I’ll give the LP office a call.
Thanks for commenting.
Thanks George! I very much appreciate the work you put into this and am looking forward to strengthening the relationship in the next election cycle along the lines you suggest here.
Thank you, Sean. Look forward to working on this. :)
Keep it up.
Hey George-
This post seems relatively recent, but also seems to show a little bit more enthusiasm for electoral work than I thought you currently had? Was your conversion to anti-electoral after this, or are you still trying to help out candidates as part of a broader push for getting liberty ideas out there?
Not being critical at all, just was curious about what developments in your thinking happened when.
Forgot to check the email notify button.
Hey Joel, I started this project several months before I realized that this kind of activity was immoral.