Where does the Municipal League get their raters? Whether a rolodex or phone book, they usually get the results they want.
Practically any person or small group can think of a sophisticated name for a political rating organization they might want to form, and put an advertisement on the web looking for people to join it and rate candidates for political office. The person or group that's forming the league can also make sure that the people they select are from the social and class demographic that are more likely than not to agree to their point of view about who should be in political office, which pretty much entails political philosophy regardless of whether they say their organization is only analytical, objective and for "good government." As any fairly long-time follower of politics realizes, one person's good government is another person's albatross, and vice versa.
So if an organization of this type happens to decline shaping their membership by their own prerogatives, which is about as likely as a lawyer in a trial deciding not to use his preemptory challenges as a matter of policy rather than choice, then it is basically selecting randomly, which after indoctrination, is almost as good as being very deliberative. Ever been in a jury room, and see how quickly the jurors fall in line to the conventional point-of-view(s)? Moreover, it is harder to get a petition signed going into room of 20 people standing in a line, whereby nearly everyone is thinking of how the others in line are judging them, than if you saw 20 people by themselves, in which case, each person pretty much is going by their own independent analysis on whether to sign the petition or not.
The same with this Municipal League, that with their cross-Establishment ties, manages to get much of the media to grovel to them. Their raters, whether chosen randomly, as if out of a phone book, or consciously selected to ensure they stay in a predetermined "box," are all indoctrinated by the organizers that guide them. They have about 8 - 10 raters interviewing candidates, and I would bet good money that they would do no better on a political science test than, say, 8 random Federal Way citizens. In fact, as to which one would get the higher score, I would put my money on the Federal Way citizens any day of the year.
[Related post: "Farewell to Farces and Puppet Masters."]
[Revised on 8/18/15.]
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