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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Utah Democrats running for office this year are bypassing answering a national voting project survey at the behest of state party leaders.
Project Vote Smart, a nonpartisan, nonprofit voter education group based in Philipsburg, Mont., polls gubernatorial, congressional and legislative candidates in all states. The issue-related survey results are then posted on the Internet for the public's review.
The group has mailed questionnaires to Utah legislative candidates, but has found Utah's Democrat leadership encouraging candidates not to answer the survey.
"Our most basic question is: Are you willing to let citizens know where you stand on important issues of the day?" project spokeswoman Rachel Pagliocca said, adding that voters should demand this kind of information.
Todd Taylor, executive director of the Utah Democratic Party acknowledges that if asked, party leaders will tell candidates not to fill out Project Vote Smart surveys. But he says, there's no "formal campaign" against the organization.
For more than a decade, Taylor said he and other professional party operatives have had concerns about Project Vote Smart.
The surveys, he said, focus on hot button issues and provide check-a-box answer choices that are "the most simplistic, stupid answers you can imagine to choose from."
In some instances, the answers also fail to adequately reflect the values most Utah candidates share. A question about abortion, for example, provides no answer that reflects the anti-abortion beliefs of Utah candidates, most of whom are members of the conservative Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Taylor said.
"But (Project Vote Smart officials) have never even talked to us to try to work things out," he said.
Pagliocca said the surveys provide an open, blank response area for candidates to use when the multiple-choice responses don't apply.
The project uses experts in each state to localize survey questions. In Utah this year, that meant including questions about whether candidates support a flat-rate income tax or a repeal of the law that allows undocumented immigrant high school graduates to pay in-state college tuition.
In the late 1990s, 40 percent of Utah legislative candidates completed the surveys, Pagliocca said. That dropped to just 25 percent in 2004.
"It is just bad for citizens to not know how these candidates stand on the issues," she said.
Utah's Republican Party hasn't made any recommendations to GOP candidates about the project's survey, party Executive Director Jeff Hartley said. The party lets candidates make up their own mind when it comes to surveys, he said.
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Information from: The Deseret News, http://www.deseretnews.com
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
