Swing State Project has an analysis of each state Democratic Party website that shows that more than three-fourths lack "the most basic of tools for online campaigning":
I was shocked to discover that three-fourths of state Democratic parties do not have blogs. AL,
AK,
AZ,
AR,
CT,
DE,
FL,
HI,
IL,
IN,
IA,
KY,
LA,
ME,
MA,
MI,
MN,
MS,
MT,
NH,
NJ,
NY,
NC,
ND,
OK,
OR,
PA,
RI,
SD,
TN,
TX,
VT,
VA,
WA,
WV,
WI all make the
list of shame for not having a blog. Additionally,
ID,
NM,
UT, and
WY have blogs that they have decided not to use and
MD's blog has only 2 posts.
The good news is that enterprising Parties have realized they can easily start a blog for free:
As
NE and
NV have demonstrated, a state party can spend 20 minutes to set up a
free blog on blogger, put a link on their website, and be a modern Party in a half an hour.
This study is a scathing indictment of Chairman McAliffe's re-invention as a grassroots leader. As with all new tools that need to be utilized by the state Parties, the DNC or the ADSC could have easily created instructions, deployed best practices, and all of these states could have been taking advantage of blogging during the election.
Of particular interest to me was the fact the Mark Brewer's Michigan Party made the List of Shame and yet he appeared to "relish" kicking out the bloggers during yesterday's fiasco. Which suggests he understands what is going on but has chosen for his state not to take advantage of modern tools. Not only did Brewer hold his Party back, but his incompetent leadership of the ADSC appears to have also held back three-fourths of the states.
Update [2004-12-12 18:32:17 by blogswarm]:It appears MN and VT have blogs, however the state party has chosen to to link to those blogs from the front page of their websites.