Real Heroes, Real Suspicious: Round Two

A year ago, the Richardson Coalition, a political action committee formed to elect its preferred candidates to city council, created something called the "Real Heroes Award." Many people were suspicious of the PAC's motives (and by many people, I mean me and by suspicious, I mean dead certain). Their voting procedure, requiring the public to submit their email addresses to the PAC, smacked of an email harvesting scheme. I wrote about it here.

After the jump, THEY'RE BA-ACK!

---

The PAC has had a year to prove me wrong, but judging from this, they haven't changed their voting scheme one bit. They are still set up to harvest email addresses. Those will prove especially useful this year, a city council election year. No surprise, the calendars for the "Real Heroes Award" voting and the 2011 city council elections coincide perfectly.

Here's what I thought of the practice last year. My opinion still stands:

Is there anything wrong with that? Not really. I just wish the PAC would be more open with the public. I just wish it had answered that question "Why?" more like this, "The Richardson Coalition PAC wants to grow its mailing list and thinks doing it this way will be both effective and make a contribution to the Richardson community at the same time." Because, whether the PAC cares to admit it, the PAC itself stands to benefit significantly from its own award. Ironically, the PAC's stated desire to recognize "citizens who give to the community with no expectation of any personal reward" would make the PAC itself ineligible for its own award.