FAIRHOPE, Ala. — The seven candidates for mayor sat in alphabetical order behind a table at the Eastern Shore Art Center during Thursday’s forum hosted by the Downtown Fairhope Business Association.

And one woman sat on the steps in front of the candidates slightly off to the side with a large piece of white poster board in her lap, carefully making notes.

She looked busy and focused, but very much at ease, like she belonged there and was working in an official capacity for the forum that night for either the Downtown Merchants Association or ESAC, or both.

“Several (candidates) came up to me afterwards,” said Paulette Ondilla Fedor, a Fairhope resident who moved here five years ago from Pittsburgh, Pa., where she was an analyst for US Airways. “One wanted to know if I was sketching them. I told them I was just gathering information to make a good decision.”

If a grade were given for learning about candidates to make an informed choice in the Aug. 26 elections for mayor and City Council, Fedor would surely get an A+. It’s hard to imagine anyone working harder this election season at the task of understanding the candidates and their positions on the issues.

“I arrived late and there weren’t any seats, so I just went up and sat there,” Fedor said about sitting on the steps in front of the candidates in view of several hundred people in the audience that night. “No one said anything to me, to move or anything.”

Several people attending the forum also came up to her afterward, wanting to know what she was working on while looking at her detailed handiwork on the poster board.

She looked like she could have talked with them all night about her work-in-progress. The curious people around her seemed fascinated in what she was doing.

Her homemade chart was divided into columns like a spreadsheet, with candidates’ names down one side, and categories for various campaign issues running along the other. As the candidates spoke, she made notations in the boxes for each one under their names and the issues they discussed.

She did the same thing for the mayor and City Council candidate forums at the Civic Center, she said. But it’s just part of the work she’s done in her extensive efforts to gather information to help guide her decisions in the voting booth.

“I’ve talked with a lot of the candidates,” Fedor said. “I’ve tried to interview them all and have met most of them at various events and functions.”

As part of her research, she has also reviewed the voter guides published by the Eastern Shore Chamber of Commerce, clipped recent newspaper articles about the election and candidates, pulled information from the Fairhope Public Library, and done a lot of Internet research, including visiting candidates’ Web sites.

Fedor could be that ideal hardworking informed voter described by groups like the League of Women Voters and Common Cause.

“Think through what are the most important issues for you, and then look at the candidates as if they are applying for a job with you,” said Virginia Randolph, president of the League of Women Voters of Greater Birmingham. “They may not have the answer but consider how they handle answering the question. It might indicate how they would handle the issue.”

Randolph recommends using the same kinds of information that Fedor has sought in her quest to understand the local elections, such as newspaper articles, Web sites and voter guides. She also has some more advice.

“Talk with friends and family, because they might have different insight and perspectives on the candidates,” Randolph said. “We also encourage people to read the financial reports that candidates must submit prior to the election. Unfortunately, they sometimes don’t have to submit the last one until it is almost too late to do any good.”

Fedor said that financial disclosure reports were one source of data that she had not yet found a lot of information about. (See related story.)

“That kind of campaign disclosure information can indicate bias and conflicts of interest,” said Jane Watson, assistant director of Common Cause Georgia, a nonpartisan organization. “We have tracked the flow of money into officials’ campaigns from developers working on specific projects such as at Jekyll Island. You might ask what are they getting for their money?”

Fedor said she learned some of her analytic skills in her job of 25 years with US Airways and now has time to apply it to the local municipal elections.

“I think this election is a turning point,” Fedor said. “This is a very unique town, and I don’t want us to lose that. I have some candidates I like, but I'm trying not to let that influence me in my research. I’m trying to be scientific.”