Waiting for the next election cycle

Since Citizen Miller has a focus on candidates rather than issues, this site is now going into dormancy -- until the next election cycle comes around.

The big challenge in local elections is getting enough (or any) information about the candidates -- and hopefully candidates will be a little more forthcoming the next time around.

I remember back forty years ago -- when I was growing up in Cincinnati -- my Mom was a member of the League of Women Voters -- and they presented information about every candidate for everything. Here (Illinois) the League seems to have morphed into issue advocacy.

The internet offers a great opportunity to economically present as much information as anyone wants to gather -- but that's the problem -- no one is doing that work in a reliable, non-partisan way -- and most of the candidates don't even bother to present themselves.

Here in Forest Park, we have a listserv for local politics (ForestParkForums.com) but participants are anonymous and irresponsible - so if there is any good information being presented, it's lost in the barrage of name-calling, rumor mongering, and vicious innuendo.

We also have a non-partisan community action group, Citizens United for Forest Park , but it's really just one man's crusade against Village Hall and over-development.

Hopefully -- eventually -- it will take its mission more seriously, and present an informative, non-partisan website covering local issues and candidates.

And finally, we have local blogger (Carl Nyberg) who's dedicated to "activist journalism" -- but he's not really dedicated to credible journalism -- which takes a lot a work (verifying all the stories that come in) - and since he's not getting paid for this job -- I can hardly blame him for not doing it.

And, of course, we have the local newspaper - (Forest Park Review) and maybe that's the best we'll ever have -- dependent on the skill and maturity of the young journalists who begin their careers with a low-paying job at a tiny, local newspaper.

My fondest hope is that the losing candidates from these recent elections will build informational websites with the time they would have spent going to board meetings if they had been elected.

Is that too much to ask ?