[Here's the PD article -B]
Article published - Nov 7, 2007
Find Your Political Match
Web site lets you see which presidential candidate's stands mesh with yours
<table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="740"><tbody><tr><td> https://srimg.ny.publicus.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=SR&Date=20071107&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=711070365&Ref=AR&Profile=1033
SRJC student Jerome Beck takes the Glassbooth survey Tuesday at the request of The Press Democrat. MARK ARONOFF / The Press Democrat</td><td>https://www1.pressdemocrat.com/g/t.gif</td></tr></tbody></table>
By GUY KOVNER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Let's say you've determined your sentiments on Iraq, the environment, health care, immigration, abortion and other pressing issues of the day.
How do you figure out which of the 16 major presidential candidates is the man or woman for you?
You could read newspapers, watch TV, listen to debates and follow blogs like a fiend. Or you could let a brand new political Web site, Glassbooth.org, do it for you.
"We are putting the power of inquiry in the hands of the voter," said Ian Manheimer, one of the trio of 24-year-olds who founded the site that claims to be "at the forefront of innovation and democracy."
Based on your responses to a 20-question online quiz, Glassbooth, run by a nonpartisan Cambridge, Mass.-based nonprofit group, will calculate how your sentiments align with the candidates.
Jerome Beck, 26, a Santa Rosa Junior College student who tried out Glassbooth on Tuesday, said: "This is pretty cool. I kind of like this."
Glassbooth told Beck, a student government Cabinet member, that his opinions have an 88 percent similarity with Democrat Chris Dodd, a Connecticut senator.
"Never heard of him," Beck said.
If the election were tomorrow, Beck would vote for Barack Obama, the Illinois senator. Glassbooth said Beck and Obama are 81 percent in agreement on the issues.
With Rudy Giuliani, the Republican former New York City mayor, Beck shared only a 45 percent consensus.
"It's fascinating. I applaud what they're doing," said Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and the Media at California State University, Sacramento.
O'Connor took the Glassbooth quiz Tuesday and found "to my great surprise" that she is aligned with Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Democratic congressman. The catch? "I can't stand to listen to him," O'Connor said.
Therein lies the rub of rating candidates by cold, hard data, no matter how accurate. "We're also visceral about our choices," O'Connor said.
Perceptions of a candidate's character, charisma and electability carry as much weight as the issues, she said.
For example, Kucinich doesn't have "a chance in hell" of winning the White House, she said.
David McCuan, a Sonoma State University political science professor, gave Glassbooth high marks for originality. But political campaigns are about contrast, he said, and the 2008 race hasn't yet shown sufficient daylight between the horses.
"There's not a lot distinguishing the candidates," McCuan said.
Still, both the academics agreed that Glassbooth could draw the highly coveted and hard-to-reach 18- to 29-year-old voters into the political fray.
Nearly 52 percent of the under-30 voters cast ballots in the 2004 presidential election, up 8.9 percent from 2000. Turnout by 30-and-over voters was up only 5.5 percent from 2000 to 2004.
Manheimer, a 2005 graduate of Tulane University, said the Web site is aimed at under-30s, who generally rely on television for their political news. Since TV coverage lacks depth, he said, young voters are turning to the Internet to fill the "information gap."
Glassbooth went online Friday with a cyberspace rush, Manheimer said. Over the weekend, the site registered about 40,000 unique visitors, who spent an average of seven minutes there, he said.
An average visit at the Web's top 100 sites is 5.3 minutes, according to comScore, an Internet monitoring firm. Glassbooth needs a much longer track record to be recognized as a leading site, comScore spokesman Andrew Lipsman said.
Experts like McCuan agree the Internet will play an increasingly powerful role in American politics, and Manheimer intends to be part of it.
"Tools like this will become part of the civic life in this country," he said.
Beck, the SRJC student, said he's intrigued by his pairing with Senator Dodd. "It does make me curious," he said. "I'll probably Google him and see what he's about."
Visit https://www.glassbooth.org