By Declare Staff
The language below is adapted from Declare’s “About Us.”
For a news website that covers, broadly speaking, “the political process,” the word declare might bring to mind a couple of images. One is the most famous piece of writing committed to parchment in American history. The other is a person speaking up; “stating emphatically,” as one definition goes.
This is the spirit of our digital platform, DECLARE: We are proud of America’s founding, and this pride informs (1) what we choose to prioritize in our coverage, and (2) the perspective from which it is covered. A few words about each:
First, we prioritize the issues that are fundamental to the country’s basic functioning. When the colonies declared their independence from the English crown, they did not do so specifically because their taxes were too high — rather because they had no say in setting them. Today, a campaign consultant or member of the news media might call this a “process issue,” distinct from the outcomes of public policy that candidates promise and governments are chosen to deliver. Process, it is said, loses the attention of voters and news consumers. If that is true, then it comes at the mounting cost of Americans losing control of their nation.
Most citizens likely remember the sentence from the Declaration of Independence that begins, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” But We, the People, would do well to remember the sentence that follows: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Those specific words, in fact, reflect DECLARE’s initial editorial scope: the election process, including the policies that shape how they are run and the players who administer and oversee them, especially at the local and state levels of government.
Our day-one stories provide illustrative examples.
- Declare staff writer Miranda Combs, who, in addition to being a multiple award-winning broadcast journalist in Kentucky, was the communications director to secretary of state Michael Adams, zooms into her home state as well as Arizona to prime readers about two novel challenges to election professionals. One is the imbalance of attention between new policy and the enforcement of existing policy on noncitizen voting. The other is the historically high number of election reform bills in state legislatures nationwide.
- Declare editor Chris Deaton, who has been a writer and editor for members of Congress as well as for The Weekly Standard, digs into claims being made against the new owner of the rebranded Dominion Voting Systems, Scott Leiendecker, which are serious given the country’s fluctuating levels of mistrust of the election system. He speaks to Leiendecker’s former colleagues and examines the public paper trail of his career, concluding that the emerging narrative lacks due diligence for being about such a volatile issue.
- Former North Carolina governor Pat McCrory, the chairman of the North Carolina chapter of RightCount (more below), conveys a bottom line of sorts about the shared responsibility of citizens when it comes to their elections. “The standard we must all live by is clear,” he says in commentary for the website: “Fight hard, follow the law, count every vote, and when it’s over, accept the results. Because if we stop trusting our elections, we stop trusting each other.”
Second, as to Declare’s perspective: We are guided by what is in the Constitution, in statute, and in the interests of stronger national bonds and trust. This leads us toward a constitutionally conservative tendency and a demand for facts. We will never be able to cover every trend or development that arguably falls within our purview; and our content choices reflect both news and editorial judgment. No matter the decisions we make in these regards, it is our uncompromising priority that they be backed by facts, and we aim to hold ourselves accountable for it. We acknowledge that the American political system, such as its elections, can be complicated, and we find no virtue in misleading readers about any of it. Agree or disagree with our biases, fine; in either case, we hope to tell stories that are faithful to what is knowable and what is reasonable.
For the first months of DECLARE’s operations, we will be a text-driven site, with a combination of features, issue explainers and primers, spot news, and commentary. Over time, we intend to expand into video and data visualization, to become a true multimedia and multichannel platform. And, finally, we are affiliated with the 501(c)(3) RightCount, and we will disclose when the organization’s official representatives appear in our work, whether as quoted sources or opinion contributors. They will be as subject to our editorial standards as anyone else, which is to say: totally.
We hope that DECLARE enhances your appreciation and understanding of the American system of government, and that you find us honest, thorough, and immersing. If so, we will have met our goal of providing a small but meaningful service to the citizenry.