• Plan early, plan well, plan to have it all come unglued
  At some point, probably in the closing weeks of the campaign, the best-laid plans for issues-based or other coverage will be sorely tested. Campaign frenzy will demand staff and resources you don’t have, and you’ll be asked to make a choice between covering the "news" or sticking with the plan. Expect that to happen, and make the unexpected part of your planning. Build flexibility into your coverage so you can stay with your plan.
• Expand your team
  Think about including people other than the political or government reporters. Ask those on your staff who know a subject best to do issues reports, even if they have no political reporting experience. The education or health or crime reporter might love a chance to get involved in political coverage.
  
• Get wired
  The Internet offers an almost unlimited opportunity to provide citizens with information for which there’s no time on television or space in the newspaper. Start with a primer, basic information on registering, voting, and election dates. Add biographical information on the candidates, job descriptions, and links or other references to places citizens can get additional information on the candidates and the issues. Archive your special reports, profiles, issues stories and comparisons, Ad Watches, and other important stories. Build a databank on campaign contributions. In short, creating your own election web page allows you to make available to interested citizens basic information, plus the best of what you have reported during the months of campaigning.
• Be open
  Let your readers/viewers know what you are planning and when they will see it. That will prompt some to look for special reports and features they might otherwise miss. If you’re taking a very different approach to coverage, explain why. Tell the candidates, too, so they aren’t surprised and don’t feel ambushed or sandbagged.
• Speak for the citizens
  Reporters participating in citizen-based projects have discovered that asking questions in the name of citizens is empowering. Candidates evade many questions that journalists ask along the campaign trail.
• Stay in touch with citizens – and consult with them, too
  Remember things can change, fast. So develop a way to stay in touch with citizens. Citizen panels and call-in lines are two such techniques. Use the panel members as a sounding board, spending a few minutes each day talking with different people about their reactions to the candidates and your coverage.
• Repeat, repeat, repeat
  It’s amazing – scary actually – how many intelligent, interested, committed voters say they didn’t see, or spend any time with, those early issues stories or that wonderful full-page or five-minute candidate profile.
• Save some of your resources for the end
  People who intend to vote want useful summaries in the form of special reports and voter guides just before the election, even if they have read or seen or heard every single campaign story along the way. For both the conscientious and the not-so-conscientious voter, the days just before an election are study time.
• Remember the bottom line
  What the citizens want to know, and what will determine how they vote, is how what they read or hear affects their lives. Design your coverage with that in mind. Keep asking yourself if your reporters are thinking about the information needs of the citizen-voter.

• Give people basic campaign information – early and often
  Provide a calendar that includes basic civics information, starting with deadlines for filing, registering, petitions, and dates of the primary and general elections.  List radio and television appearances as well. In short, give people every opportunity to be interested and to get involved.
• Do a primer on the issues
  As the campaign is beginning, determine the key issues and explain each in the context of its impact on citizens and of governance – finding a solution or solutions to the problem a particular issue raises. This might be done as part of a major project, as many of the news organizations involved in citizen-based projects have done. 
• Help citizens think through issues and candidate positions
  Elections should be as much about what as who. Before citizens decide on a candidate, they need to think about what they want the candidate to deliver, what they want government to do. That means deliberation and dialogue. Provide discussion questions with the issues reports. Encourage people to informally talk about their concerns. Host some small-group discussions and report on these.

Network the voters
If you want to encourage people to vote, do more than run a "vote" banner or a "reminder" box or broadcast public interest spots on election day. These are the traditional ones. These days , technology and internet have provided an opportunity to every candidate to get right onto the people's desktops. However , the difference is seen based upon having a better website with good features -- something which also serves as a tool  to enable your supporters build an online network .  Throughout the campaign, urge people to participate, to discuss stories you’ve reported, to talk with their friends about the issues online, and to encourage their friends and neighbors to participate and to vote

• Assess candidates on the issues -- citizens’ and their own
  Early in the campaign, get the candidates on the record on citizen issues and on those issues they bring to the campaign, as well. The idea is to define the differences and set the discussion table for voters. And then be alert to and report any shifts. But resist the tendency to treat that discovery as a "gotcha.’’ The position change may be evidence of vacillation, or manipulation, or response to a special interest, or part of an altered strategy. But it might be something far more interesting; the candidate may have come to another judgment in the course of listening to and talking with citizens about the issue. That’s a far better story.

• Report the priorities
  Knowing where the candidates stand on an issue isn’t enough. Voters want to know how the candidates weigh the issue as well. Where is it on the priority scales? How much time and energy will the candidates invest in dealing with that issue? What will they compromise on or sacrifice to make it happen?

• Sean
  
  http://www.ezcampaigns.com