The issues - Election 2008

Run to vote members posing in front of their van

"Run to Vote" — students and teachers from Granville High School in Stem, NC traveled the country in 2008 to teach people about campaign issues. (Image source. More about the photograph)

General

Voter’s Survival Kit (Public Agenda): A dynamic site from a nonpartisan nonprofit organization designed to help you decide what you want before you decide who you want. Use the issues guide to access documented facts and consider the choices and current public opinion on eighteen different issues of national impact.

Where the candidates stand

OnTheIssues.org: Want to know what a candidate has said about an issue in the news? How about tracking how they have voted about this same issue in the past? In addition to considering each candidate’s words and actions with respect to 24 different issues, this site will help you better understand the issues themselves by providing background information and definitions of the “buzzwords” for each issue. OnTheIssues is a nonpartisan service funded by private donations and advertising sales. Be warned: there are banner ads on this site.
Annenberg Political Fact Check (University of Pennsylvania): Monitor the factual accuracy of what the major U.S. political players have to say about issues in TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases.
Sciencedebate 2008: Cosponsored by American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Council on Competitiveness, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, and signed by over 175 American universities and organizations this site posts the major candidates’ responses to science-related questions on topics such as health, national security and the environment.

The Political Spectrum

What Are You, Liberal or Conservative? (Social Studies School Service): This worksheet will help your students place themselves in the left-to-right political spectrum.
The World’s Smallest Political Quiz (Advocates for Self Government): The Libertarian Party offers this alternative to the left-right political spectrum, a chart that measures libertarian vs. authoritarian views on social and economic issues and. The questions are (not surprisingly) phrased to reflect libertarian views, but the quiz is nevertheless a useful way of re-thinking the political spectrum. High school students might use this as a springboard for discussion on whether the two-sided political model continues to make sense in 2008.