There are two things that fascinate me in just about equal proportions, politics and horrible web sites. I have always found that they both provide cheap laughs and plenty of things to legitimately fear. So when I came across this collection of “The Worst Political Web Sites” on CNET I was intrigued.

I would have thought given the absolute professionalism and high dollar stakes of modern political elections that all campaign websites would likely be drab but excruciatingly professional. I was very, very wrong. CNET’s collection contains websites as woefully incomplete or amateurishly painful to look at as anything I’ve ever seen.

In a way it’s refreshing that there is still room in the American political landscape for a blogging dog. Shawn O’Donnell’s pet, Josie assures us of her owner’s many terrific qualities and urges the voters of Virginia’s 1st congressional district to vote for the Democrat. While reading Josie the dog’s blog I learned the disturbing fact that Senator Edward Kennedy had a dog named Splash.

The most common problem shared among the bad campaign sites is simply not really having a website. The idea that any candidate in a modern political election could at this late date have place holding sites or sites “under construction” is incredible. But not nearly as incredible as the Independent candidate for congress in Nevada whose web site’s meta-tags include the keywords, Brittany Spears, car rental, scholarships, and baby names.

The list is a fair mix from both ends of the political spectrum and miserable web design knows no party affiliation. However, I did notice that awful Republican sites tended to offend the eye by their design, garish contrasting colors, sappy patriotic symbols, and lots of underlining and exclamation points. The Democrats, on the other hand, tended to have more irritating flash animation.