Boy, the Sheheen campaign sure is having trouble keeping track of its supporters! First, our friend and former blogger Laurin forgot to include Doug Jennings in the list of 40 lawmakers who endorsed him last week…

… and now we find out that not all of the 40 was actually endorsing him. Trav Roberts is taking the blame, so I guess Laurin is off the hook on this one. But that’s not what interested me about this story. What grabbed my interest was this quote:

Greenville-based political consultant Chip Felkel said endorsements mattered much more 20 years ago. But today, skeptical voters who can access information and news on candidates from a variety of sources are far less likely to vote for a certain candidate based on an endorsement.

“Candidates spend a lot of time on those endorsements and I’m not certain that they influence voters,” he said.

Well, I care about endorsements. In fact, just this week I was thinking  about e-mailing all the campaigns to ask them for comprehensive lists of who’s backing them.

To me, the idea that endorsements are unimportant because voters have a lot of other sources of information about the candidates is just ridiculous. I have access to more info than the average voter, including the fact that I generally know the candidates and have interacted with them a good deal. But I still want to know who’s backing them, because it will tell me things that I can’t learn otherwise.

I think of myself as a pretty smart and perceptive guy, but I know that if I make judgments in a complete vacuum, they’re not going to be nearly as valid, or as thoroughly examined, as when I also tap into the judgment of other people to see what they’re perceiving that I’m not.

Human beings are complicated, and a lot of things go into their judgments of other humans. It takes a lot of investment of brainpower, and each such judgment is based on an almost infinite set of impressions — from the rational to the emotional — that varies from person to person. Therefore I’m very curious to learn of the judgments others have made — particularly the judgments of people who, over time, I’ve come to respect for their judgment.

Having directed an editorial board for years, I’ve come to learn that other smart people see things that I miss, even when we’re talking about impressions from the same interview. And then, their minds go in different directions based on what they’ve seen and heard and read and experienced. Discuss the matter of an endorsement with several such people, and your judgment will be better for having done so. Even if you end up where you started, you will be able to better justify your position.

This, to me, was always the value to the reader of newspaper endorsements. Some would complain that we were “telling them how to vote,” but that was never the point. The point was to share with you the thought processes that led to an endorsement (as I always said, the “why” was more important than the “who” in an endorsement) so that you could use that along with all the other data available to you and, in the end, make a better-thought-out decision, whomever you voted for.

I’m not going to make up my mind whom to vote for purely on the basis of one person’s endorsement. But when I look at a list of backers and see the names of a lot of people whom I’ve  come to respect — as a result of carefully constructed judgment over time — it will have an impact.

Beyond that, it provides us with a good measurement of how a candidate is doing. It matters if serious players are lining up behind a certain candidate over others, for good or ill. It raised the question of “why” and causes us to look harder at that candidate.

Anyway, I think I’ll follow up on my idea, and see if I can compile some lists of key backers…