Ladies and gentlemen, take a journey with me into the Hot Tub Time Machine and step back to 1996.  Or 1998.  Some time in the late 1990s – it doesn’t really matter.

You see, that is the era that the Maine legislature‘s website seemingly belongs in.  Worse (dramatically so) is the Maine House‘s site.  Even worse (I think – it is hard to pick who has the oldest, crappiest design) is the Maine Senate.  I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but Alex Hammer – with his iframes, rotating .gifs, and photoshop lens flare actually seems to have a more advanced website than Maine’s legislative branch.

At least the Maine government hub, executive branch and judicial branch of Maine government have made an effort to stay at least five years behind the times.

Don’t go looking for any creative innovation from anyone associated with making laws in Maine.  If it was possible to have a worse website than the chambers of the legislature, the parties somehow found a way.  I feel dirty even linking to the House Republicans, House Democrats, Senate Republicans (the best of the lot) or the atrociously bad rip off that is the Senate Democrats‘ site.

I realize that somebody’s cousin probably designed all these sites for a 30 rack of beer, and everyone has just kind of maintained the status quo since, but sweet baby Jesus this is ridiculous.

Maine is very famous for a utilitarian attitude about – well, everything.  There is nowhere on earth that “if it ‘aint broke, don’t fix it” is a more appropriate truism than in the Pine Tree State.

But I believe we have long since arrived at the point when the single easiest and most frequent contact that most Maine constituents will have with their legislative body – the legislative web presence – needs to be dramatically overhauled.  Information is clumsily organized, stylistically hideous, not logically put together, difficult to navigate, and hardly dynamic in any sense of the word.

What resources are available are so disjointed and slapped together that it actually dissuades a user from bothering.  And indeed, there is an immense amount of information and resources that are simply unavailable that should be there.

There is no mobile integration, nothing utilizing social networks, no ability to do much of anything that most of us view as standard and even un-innovative on modern websites.

And here is your excuse to fix it, folks.  The Maine legislative site was recently hacked because of an exploit (what took them so long?), and the digital brain trust of Augusta is attempting to put together the pieces again.

What better time to say to yourselves, “well, perhaps we have sucked as much life out of these assets as possible, and it is time to maybe update things”.

Now, part of this is the marketer in me.  There is no unified look and feel to anything, there is no branding, there is no attempt in any of these sites to look good, be easy to use or engaging, or otherwise invite people in and give them a positive experience.  It is entirely built out of the need to have some information available online – but nothing more.

This may sound like a superficial and nitpicky complaint – but think about it.  This is the the most prominent public facing asset the Maine legislature has.  If you want information on a bill, a member of the legislature, a schedule, a hearing – literally anything – you will end up going there.  If the Maine legislature wants me to think it has its shit together, one of the easiest things it could do is make the experience of engaging with that body reflect that impression.

In other words, a well designed, professional looking site that is dynamic, easy to use, and has the information I want/need/would find valuable at my fingertips would tell me something very positive about the legislature.  They take interactions with me – the constituent – seriously.

The current batch of legislative websites does none of that.  Basically it is akin to a legislator on the floor of the House while wearing ripped, dirty jeans, a filthy t-shirt, and a trucker hat.  It is the exact same concept.

No self respecting public servant would disrespect his constituents by being that much of a slob.

Yet, this sloppy, dated, ugly mess of websites is presented to us, and it is somehow acceptable.  It is just as much of a disrespectful statement to the public as dressing like a slob – only it is worse, because far more people see it and use these portals as their interaction with the legislature.

I will never forget the embarrassment I felt when the gay marriage debate was happening, and national news outlets and blogs were linking to the Maine House of Representatives site so that people could watch the debate.  Thousands of people from not only Maine but the rest of the country were converging on this archaic, embarrassment of a site, and I can only imagine the thoughts that went through their head about it.

“Is this the best they can do?”

“Boy, people in Maine suck at this.”

“Maine isn’t exactly with the times.”

“These people sure don’t care being bothered with making a respectable site for us to use.”

Yes, yes, I’m sure many – even most – just clicked on the link to watch the video and moved on without caring at all.  But none the less, it remains a subtle statement to the constituents of these lawmakers that they won’t be bothered to “dress up” to digitally shake their hand.

Because that’s exactly what a website like this is, folks – a new way to shake the hand of your legislature and interact and engage with them.  Just because it is easy doesn’t mean it is less significant.  If anything, the scope of it and its ease of access means that more people (a lot more) shake your hand this way.

I’m not asking for a flashy, expensive redesign here people.  No need to blow a hundred thousand of dollars of taxpayer money on experts and consultants and vendors.  Just something nice, clean, organized simple, professional and interactive.

You know, something that would take me all of an hour and a free copy of wordpress to come up with.