While various political bloggers have been batting candidates back and forth for several months now, the Liberal candidates themselves have so far – with one or two notable exceptions – given cyberspace a wide berth. Several declared candidates have no visible online presence; several others have minimal web sites. Only one seems to acknowledge the changes the have swept the web in the past few years – changes that, apparently, have largely left Liberal leadership hopefuls behind.

(Bear in mind that I’m a committed New Democrat, so I’m not going to be especially gentle with any of these folks. On the other hand, I’m not backing any of them, either, so I’ll at least be somewhat evenhanded.)

Here’s a quick survey of the field, and their respective web presences:

Dr. Carolyn Bennett web site screen captureDr. Carolyn Bennett: There’s a perfectly functional, content-rich web site here; unfortunately, it’s buried several layers inside an interface that makes a serious usability mistake.

Once you click past the English/Français splash screen, you arrive at an attractive photo of Dr. Bennett’s desk, with a large agenda book open in front of you. You navigate by clicking on entries in the address book. But if you’re visually impaired (or surfing on a slow dial-up connection), you have a problem… because the copy on that home page and on most of the pages it links to is done entirely as graphics; unless you can actually see the image, you have no idea what the text says. It’s an approach that puts design ahead of accessibility. The one saving grace would have been the use of “alt” attributes (a piece of code which provides a text-based alternative to an image), but the site’s designer hasn’t added them yet. (Here’s hoping they do.) (Updated: I may not have been entirely fair; I finally found a little text-version link, way at the bottom-right-hand side of the page. So there is an option for the visually- and patience-impaired… but they’ll have to wade through the whole page to find it.)
Several layers down is the actual site, which uses a clean, easily-navigated design (and recapitulates the content of what they call the “photo site”). It includes a blog (but, unfortunately, no feeds or reader comments), a list of e-mail contacts for the campaign, an e-newsletter, a newsroom (again, no feeds) and more. There’s a page promising a wide-ranging policy discussion, but no interactivity yet, apart from a form for anyone who wants to attend a “democracy dinner”.

Maurizio Bevilacqua (URL corrected): So far, his only online presence is his MP site (which merits a little drive-by criticism for publishing every speech as a PDF; for not having been updated in literally years; and for requiring you to click once to choose English or French, and then again to get past a truly unhelpful Flash animation). Interestingly, mauriziobevilacqua.ca currently resolves to a “No web site configured at this address” message… so something new may be coming.

Wait a minute… there it is! But so far, it doesn’t even show up in the first 50 Google hits on the man’s name. I’ll have more to say soon.
Scott Brison campaign web siteScott Brison: If not for Ignatieff, Brison’s would be the clear leader among the various web sites. It has polished design and visual appeal, as well as simple navigation through a wide range of content. There’s an email newsletter, send-to-a-friend features for each page, a volunteer form, full contact information and, yes, not one but three separate news feeds (but curiously, no omnibus feed).

Where Brison’s site falls short, though, is in offering any real sense of interactivity and openness. While Ignatieff’s site has an apparently no-holds-barred discussion forum and the promise of a policy forum, Brison’s site’s public face involves only one-way communication. There’s no blog and no comments.

Stephane Dion campaign web siteStéphane Dion: It’s 1996 again! Dion’s web site is sparsely populated, with only four or five pages of content. There’s a contact form (with no space for a message from you), one speech, a news release, a news story and that’s about it. No e-mail contact, no blog, no news feeds.

Update: Suddenly, there’s a lot more content: speeches, video and photos, all of it contained (hidden?) in the “Newsroom” area.

Mildly embarrassing factoid: The URLs for the en français pages are written en anglais. So “why-im-running_e.html” is, in French, “why-im-running_f.html”. That’s more than just a political gaffe; it reduces the site’s chances of appearing high in French-language search results.

Martha Hall Findlay's campaign web siteMartha Hall Findlay: Give her credit: she actually has contact information on her site, with an email address, phone number and a contact form. There’s a single page called “Issues”, which is so far pretty vague and general, relying more on boldface and italics than policy – but I understand that these things get rolled out as a campaign develops.

There are lots of pictures of Findlay campaigning, a bio page, a donation page (no online form or e-commerce yet), a form for volunteering, a link for joining the party and an event calendar. (None of the events are linked to anything, however.) But no blog, and no feeds.

Michael Ignatieff's campaign web site screen captureMichael Ignatieff: The front page is a blog, although comments are handled through forum software. There’s a news feed, an online community (the same forum that handles comments), a “policy forum” (much more moderated and controlled than that name suggests), and pages for getting involved and contacting the campaign.

The community is the most interesting feature on the site (and it, too, offers a news feed). These are early days, so there isn’t much discussion yet, but it bears watching – both for its own sake, and to see how the campaign handles the inevitable influx of supporters of Mr. Ignatieff’s opponents (not to mention people opposing the invasion of Iraq or Mr. Ignatieff’s position on torture).

Ignatieff’s is the only Liberal leadership campaign site so far that makes even a nod to the social web – but even it seems a little limited and isolated from the broader web. There are no feeds brought in from other sites, no hooks for services like photo-sharing or geographical self-identification, and certainly no individual blogs or team fundraising/campaigning features.

Ashley MacIsaac: If he has a campaign site, it’s well-hidden. All I can find is his official musician-guy web site, which links to the Halifax Daily News web site, which once had a story on him phoning them to say he’s running. I’m considering taking bets on whether he’ll actually be on the ballot.

Bob Rae: Rae appears to have nothing but a placeholder page. (Is “Call me Bob” really going to be his big meme?) Geek note: apparently, it will be based on a ColdFusion CMS.

Updated: As of April 27th, the placeholder GIF has finally been replaced. Sadly, by a placeholder Flash animation.

Joe Volpe campaign site screen captureJoe Volpe: Slicker than Dion’s site, Volpe’s makes a bold leap to, oh, about 1999. There’s a donation form, but it isn’t e-commerce enabled; it’s just a way to pass on your contact info so they can call you up to ask for your credit card number. There are forms to volunteer and sign up for updates, and a Volpe bio. Here, too, the only way to contact the campaign is through a form (although it at least offers a blank space for you to include a message).

The site’s marred, though, with unlinked links on the Get Involved page (oddly enough, the pages they ought to link to actually do exist). And if you’re looking for news, speeches or actual substance, you’re out of luck so far. There’s little news, although there are plenty of links to off-site news coverage. “Joe’s Views” is a single page of fairly benign generalities; other than that, there’s no policy. Needless to say, no blog and no news feeds. And that logo…

Speaking of design, there’s a classic design error on many pages, where an unnecessarily large photo pushes the message “below the fold” – that is, you have to scroll down at least once to see any actual content.

The wallflowers: Ken Dryden still has his election campaign site; the blog devoted to drafting him is beginning to lose its enthusiasm. And until recently, Gerard Kennedy‘s domain name linked to his constituency web site. It now goes nowhere… leading me to deduce that a new web presence is in the works. Would have been nice (and less embarrassing) to have a placeholder site there in the meantime, though, no?

I’ll keep updating this page as new sites come online and old ones get spritzed with freshener. Meanwhile, for a perspective from the other side of the spectrum, check out Blue Blogging Soapbox.

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