Along the way I have learned so much about blogging, blog platforms, Movable Type, WordPress, writing, Tennessee history, Tennessee politics, gubernatorial elections, election law, campaign finance, Chattanooga, recall elections, HTML, some CSS, social media, and even a tiny bit about SEO. Heh.

Seriously, I value every reader and every subscriber, and pray that I have been able to help citizens become more informed. I have been more than compensated in return, in ways mere money could never equal. Thank you.

Hopefully it hasn’t been a waste of time.

• Redistricting revealed: starting this week, new maps of Tennessee’s congressional and state legislative districts will be discussed and debated.
• General Assembly in session: from the 10th of January through at least the end of April or so, our state lawmakers, including a new face or two, will again be making policy decisions for the state.
• Presidential preference: On March 6, sometimes known as “Super Tuesday,” we Tennesseans will go to the polls to help select delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions, which will in turn nominate those parties’ presidential candidates.
• August heat: Primary elections will be held for state House of Representatives, Senate, and congressional seats; additionally, there are some county elections, including school board seats here in Hamilton County.
• Election Day: In November, we go to the polls to elect the next General Assembly; our congressional delegation, including one U.S. Senate seat; and President of the United States.

Throughout these and plenty of other events, my aim is to provide you with the information you most need to make these important decisions in the voting booth, and to follow your government as it does its intended work.

Regardless which side you’re on (meaning, whether you pronounce it “twenty twelve” or “two thousand twelve”), I hope you will share your news and insight, provide honest criticism, and end the year with the satisfaction that results from having made informed decisions.

I’m hoping this isn’t a huge inconvenience for anyone. I don’t get a lot of comments here, but I do want to make it as easy as possible for people to correspond with each other about their electoral choices. The hosting company recommended also using CAPTCHA, but I’m going to hold off on that and only do the registration piece. (I do use a simple CAPTCHA on the Contact page.)

You can also leave comments on the site’s companion Facebook page, if you wish.

Stupid spammers.

You are able to expand a particular office to view every candidate running for it, their party, website and social media links, news items, videos, issue positions, voting records, and campaign finance records. You can optionally answer a short survey about your own issue positions, and the candidates will be ranked according to how well their positions match yours.

Regardless, you are able to select a candidate that you like best, and save your choice to the applicable position on the mock-up ballot. The ballot is customized just for you: your districts, your chosen candidates. You can come back and change your mind at any time and save your changes.

When it’s election time, if you wish, you can download your completed ballot to your mobile device, or print it, and take it with you to the voting booth.

What would you give to have that? Would you give your brainstorming time, your design or coding skills, a little cash to entice those with said design or coding skills, or your moral support? More importantly, would you use it? Would you invite your friends, who probably pay less attention to elections than you, cherished reader of this site?

There is a working model that performs parts of the above, made by the good folks at Project Vote Smart. The Chicago Tribune put together something similar for the 2008 elections, and I’ve seen other similar efforts. I want more. It’s what I’ve wanted to do for five years, but now there’s better technology and more data sources. (Project Vote Smart has an API, for starters, but there’s more yet.)

I really want this for the 2012 elections, so there’s your dreaded arbitrary project end date.

If I get consensus from you that it’s a worthwhile endeavor, then let’s talk about next steps. You can leave comments below, or use the Contact form if you’d rather.

Thank you.

In the process of searching for the Chattanooga elections blog I thought might already exist, I found a site called “Chattablogs.” It was a group of blogs automagically aggregated on the front page. An invitation to create one’s very own Chattablog was posted in the upper right corner. I clicked it. The sign-up process was very manual then—and thus began my acquaintance with Josiah Roe, nearly seven years ago.

Roe and others had created and deployed this free online publishing platform as a project at Covenant College. Though it is much less in use now, back then it was somewhat of a social network as well as a blogging tool.

Roe went on to accomplish several more structurally significant things in Chattanooga. He is now leaving for San Francisco, and I’m marking his departure with a mention here of my gratitude for his support and friendship over the years. It’s not an exaggeration to say that my life would likely be very different now had he and the Chattablogs site not been there.

Here’s to much success and happiness in your new chapter, Josiah.

Future updates to these voter guides will include listings for half of the state Senate districts (hint: they are all even-numbered), all 99 state House districts, and all nine of the state’s congressional districts.

Pundits, political operatives, and election junkies are invited to (anonymously or otherwise) contribute information about potential and announced candidates, juicy news stories, and race outcome predictions (once the results of redistricting are known, of course).

Warm thanks are offered in advance to all readers, tipsters, civics hipsters, debaters, and, most of all, informed voters.

I have accepted an opportunity to be a “citizen journalist” for the Huffington Post, more or less with a specific assignment: the battleground race in Tennessee’s Eighth Congressional District. I’ll be writing a weekly roundup on the race and, as my schedule permits, I’ll be attending campaign-related events in the district. (I’ve only been to one spot in the whole territory, not counting driving through on I-40 a couple of times, so my geographical knowledge—what is “Hoots proper” versus “outer Hoots,” and so on—will grow over time.)

The Huffington Post (or, as we call it down at the shop, “HuffPo”) was launched by Arianna Huffington in 2005, and has quickly gained recognition and has received awards as a national leader in online journalism. It was ostensibly conceived as a progressive antidote to conservative sites like Drudge Report, but I want it to be clear that I strive to write from a nonpartisan, neutral perspective, no matter where I log in.

I’ll post more info later this week, like, where exactly on the Internet you’ll be able to find my new blog. I’m excited to be a small part of this important election cycle.

So, to get started, what do you want to see covered?

I did not get a chance to finish documenting the primary contests in the Tennessee House of Representatives. At this point, I wouldn’t finish before the races were decided, so there’s that. It’s a shame, because there are some I wanted to highlight, like District 81, where Rory Bricco and Jim Hardin are vying to see who will take on former House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh in November. There are also a few open seats, like District 18, where Rep. Stacey Campfield is running for the District 7 Senate seat. Three Republicans are running in the race to replace him: Steve Hall, Jonathan Katsiros, and Gary Loe. The winner will face Democrat Sam Alexander in November.

Other than state House, if you don’t see a district or office in the list, it’s because there is not a contested race on August 5. I realize that it’s more thorough to list all candidates, even when there is no opposition. I’ve taken the most practical approach I could muster, given time constraints. Thanks for understanding.

I’m cooking up a whole new approach for presenting this information for the November elections. Stay tuned, and thanks for your continued support.

Updates have been made to this post to clarify that the program will be a webcast, not a broadcast.

I’ve been invited to participate in Thursday night’s election coverage on WRCB-TV, Channel 3′s website, wrcbtv.com. A panel comprising veteran anchor/reporter David Carroll, Chattanooga Times Free Press managing editor Larry Henry, and myself will comment on the state primary and county general election results.

The panel coverage is expected to begin at 9:30 p.m. (EDT). I am grateful and humbled to be a part of this important night, and I thank the team at Channel 3 for the invitation.

In addition, beginning at 8:00 p.m. you’ll be able to follow local election coverage live on the Web, courtesy of the crew at chattarati.com. I’ll try to make it to as many watch parties as I can, before and after the television appearance.

Of greatest importance: if you did not vote early, and are eligible, please vote on Thursday. You don’t want to be left out of the conversation, do you?

But here’s the thing. You have to know in which districts you live. The easiest way to find this out would be to look at your voter registration card, if you knew where that was. A pretty handy alternative for Hamilton County residents would be to enter your street address in this form and then view, print, copy, or remember the results—but there is currently a problem with that site. (I’m placing a call to the Election Commission on Monday.) A really complicated way is to go to the county’s GIS mapping site, search for your address, then use the map layers to identify political boundaries. Ugh.

You can find your state and federal districts at VoteSmart. Enter your ZIP code at the top left. If, like mine, your ZIP code covers multiple districts, you can enter your ZIP+4 at the top right of the resulting page, and the results will narrow to just yours. Your congressional district and state legislative districts will be shown, but this won’t help you with city or county districts.

You can always ask me, and I will help. I have plenty of experience assisting others with finding districts and voting precincts.