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Online Politics - Will it Work?
molo asks: "This is the year I will be entering the work force, and I've realized that I need to vote to protect my rights as an American, an individual and a programmer. For that reason, I ponder this question:
Which candidate is better for geeks (and the associated geek jobs and issues)?
There is plenty of political FUD being spread from all sides, and to help you weed through it, here are some links for each of the candidates: Bush on Technology and the New Economy, Gore's High-Tech Economic Agenda, Gore on Technology & Science, Nader on Corporatism, Buchanan's Issues and Browne's Issues (anything relevant on these last two?). While I realize that there are a lot of differences between the candidates, can we try to limit this discussion to geek issues? Its hard to make heads or tails of these guys, and I'm curious what the rest of the community thinks."
RomulusNR asks: "The other day I visited Vote Smart, mainly to do a comparison of Nader vs. Gore (sorry libertarians, I'm a lib'ral) on their opinions on major issues. To my discouragement, I discovered two things while visiting the site. One, is that no major presidential candidate has filled out Vote-Smart's presidential issues test, even after repeated urgings from Vote Smart, high-profile political colleagues, and major SIGs. No, not even Mr. Internet Inventor himself. The other thing I noticed made me think Vote Smart had become thoroughly useless... in that practically every schmo with designs on political attention and the bother to get their names on their state's presidential ballots, is listed on Vote Smart. If VS's list is to be believed, there are about 60 candidates for the presidency as we speak -- about 55 more than I could think of."
I don't agree with the two-party system, but not even the most politically divergent democracies in the world have that many independent parties (at least not with their own candidates). It would be impossible to carry out an election with 60 competing candidates.
Which makes me wonder two things. One, if the Internet allows every schmoe to declare themselves a presidential candidate, will it help the political process? Will it even have an effect, with all those also-rans diluting the third-party pool? Two, if all major (or even remotely viable, like Nader) political candidates are going to simply ignore grassroots Internet 'informed politics' attempts like Vote Smart, what good will they be able to do?"
(and I'd use <font size=+5> if
<attire type="flamesuit">
The last thing the system needs is a bunch of morons who are too lazy to go down to the local polling place being able to vote. Much of the bad legislation around comes from politicians knowing that the average voter is clueless and will vote how he's told by TV.
Personally, I like Robert Heinlein's suggestion: you should not be allowed to vote unless you can find the roots of y=9x^2+12x+4. Now I know a lot of people will point to Jim Crowe laws (discrimination at the polling place to prevent blacks from voting) but guess what? Those days are OVER. GET OVER IT!
Also, I see a lot of teenagers bitching that they cannot vote. OK kid, tell you what. When you have proven that you have some degree of responsiblity, that you understand what it is to support yourself and see large amounts of your money being taken from you by force by well-meaning fools who will use it to assuage their own guilt, when you understand the consequences of your actions and the fact that some mistakes will outlive you, then you can vote.
</attire>
www.eFax.com are spammers
One advantage of using computers in the voting process itself is that they may make "instant run-off" style elections (aka preferential voting, aka australian-style) more user-friendly. The only coherent objection to these is that they might confuse some voters. With a computer holding your hand during the process (then printing out a hard-copy which you hand-carry to the ballot box to prevent fraud), this objection would evaporate.
(instant runoffs work like this: instead of just picking one person to vote for, you rank candidates in order of preference. For the "first ballot", only first choice votes are counted. But if nobody gets an absolute majority, a instant simulated runoff election is held. The lowest vote-getter is removed from the "ballot" and everyone who voted for that person is counted as voting for their second choice. This process continues until one candidate gets an absolute majority.
That way, you could vote for 1.Nader 2.Buchanan 3.Bush 4.Gore (or whatever) and be confident that your vote wasn't "thrown away" because if the vote came down to Bush and Gore you'd be counted voting for the frat boy. This would make 3rd parties more viable, and give even minority parties a strong negotiating stance ("Hey, Gore: change your platform to not fund Star Wars or the Columbian military, or we'll throw our second-choice votes to Bush en masse as a protest").
(of course, with the electoral college, things get complicated. But there is a unique, stable way to map in-state virtual run-offs among N candidates into binding directives on state electors for N ballots, and that's actually good, because the conversion could proceed state-by-state.)
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
Lieberman is big on censorship, the v-chip, and has put a lot of pressure on the movie, tv, music and video game industries:
8 055,00.html
1 0-01.htm :
http://www.wirednews.com/news/politics/0,1283,3
Also, from http://www.freedomforum.org/news/2000/08/2000-08-
In April 1998, the Virginia-based Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression gave him one of their Jefferson Muzzles, an award presented to those who show insensitivity to First Amendment principles.
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Right now still not enough people are on-line to make a real diffrence but canidates will go online for the gimmic value alone.
When I ran for office (local office nothing big) in 1997 I put stuff up on my home page and the local paper published my web url. I lost becouse I botched my campaign and didn't get my message out at all (excluding my website).
Websites are going to be sereous as a good mesure of voters are on-line and some day soon enough voters will be on-line to make an impact.
Voter information groups have websites as it's cheaper and easyer to provide information over the web but will continue to provide information in the more expensive printed form for those who request it.
Maybe I'm wrong on the impact of on-line voters sence the number of people going online is increasing all the time and at some point soon it will matter. It will matter long before the gimmic value dies off.
As for the Canidates.. In my view Bush and Gore are not very good tech canidates, I belive one third party canidate has a better grasp than the rest. (Do the research.. shouldn't be hard to figure out who I'm talking about as the rest are pritty clueless... if you can't indentify him then maybe I'm wrong about him...)
As for me.. I know who I'm voting for... and I expect he'll lose... but I'm voting anyway
I don't actually exist.
Something I've been thinking about lately is the problem of why Libertarians seem to be "closer" to Republicans. I think I've come up with the reason: all of the Republicans' stupid ideas are harder to implement than all of the Democrats'.
The Democrats' stupid ideas basically boil down to "take more money from everyone with a job and give it to people without jobs." This is easy: you raise taxes. This is especially easy once you have everybody's guns.
The Republicans' stupid ideas basically boil down to "take freedom away from everyone who doesn't agree with us." This is hard; it requires a police state, and you also have to raise taxes to do it. Plus you have the minor problem of everyone still having guns (which makes the police state hard to create).
Therefore, the problem Libertarians face is that Republicans aren't as dangerous to the things we believe in as Democrats.
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
Religeon has, in most cases, started far more wars than fixed screwed countries. Want an example? Look at ireland.
Ireland hasn't been fucked up by religion - thats just the establishment line. Note well: the beef in Ireland is British occupation. Colonialism.
The Brits have been squatting on Northern Ireland for centuries. The facts are that Brits largely practice Protestantism and the Irish largely practice Catholicism, thus allowing for the totally erroneous portrayal of this situation as a "religious war" by the late 20th century media. This has got to qualify as one of the most successful disinformation campaigns ever seen. Ask almost anybody in the USA what the problem is in Ireland, and they'll say its the Protestants and Catholics pitching bombs at each other.
The real deal is that the occupied Irish are still pitching bombs at the imperialist British invaders centuries after the fact. It's an ages-old, familiar situation around the world, and it has squat to do with religion.
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
I think the most pressing issue these days is the effect corporate power has on the political system. Look at any of the recent online/computing/internet issues and they all lead back to massive corporate power controlling government, whether it is the MPAA raiding a kid in Norway, the recording industry redefining freedom of speech, or Microsoft slapping on huge premiums and entering into illicit anti-competitive dealings with computer manufacturers. I've traced these issues back to inordinate corporate power corrupting politics...and when I got there, I realized that it was the foundation of many other non-computer/internet related issues. The fact is that until the system is reformed, and special interests removed, the system is NEVER going to work for any of us. It won't work for us geeks, it won't work for anybody. So that is why I'm voting for Nader. Both of the other candidates talk a good talk, but they won't walk the walk. They are both funded by hundreds of millions of dollars from PACs, corporations, and special interests. How much money did you donate to them? Do you think you could possibly compare to the influence bought by those hundreds of millions?
Where Nader strays from my beliefs (well, it so happens he doesn't, but let's just make a hypothetical), he makes up for it and more for being the only one with genuine integrity and passion for fixing the system, and for allowing it to work the way it was meant. I have faith that when the system is fixed and people can have their voices heard, things will be better all around, even though there are those with opinions that run counter to mine. This is the basic premise of free speech: allow everyone to talk, and the good of the whole will eventually outweighs any bad of the parts.
Please open up the debates (http://www.debatethis.org/), and give all candidates a voice. Americans deserve more than just two choices.
And if you want anecdotal evidence of character of the candidates' just check http://www.netcraft.com/whats/ to see what they're running (Bush runs Windows 2000 + IIS, Nader runs BSD/OS + Apache...I find that rather indicative).
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Folks,
I think people should be asking this question: is the Internet going to affect how you vote because of faster dissemination of information?
What is happening with the Internet now is that not only are smaller political groups getting far more publicity than before (because you no longer have to actually print out newsletters to send to readers--they can the information online), but the Internet has become increasingly a "balance" to the mainstream media itself. The success of the Drudge Report already shows how this has drastically affected news operations around the world; the rise of news/commentary sites from almost every political persuasion in the last five years on the Web has also done much to shape public opinion.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I don't know about others on /. but I think that there are other issues that are more important than where the politicians are on tech issues.
The internet is new to most people. Any sort of debate on internet issues will create the typical political FUD slinging. Do we really want this?
I think that we should wait till some of this new technology does not scare John Q. That way we can all make informed votes.
Lets give it 4 more years... then we can start to expect the true 'net canidates.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Now, what you are saying is that people who don't want to physically exert themselves also won't want to mentally exert themselves enough to decide who to vote for. That's just not true. I spend most of my time coding, which takes alot of hard thinking to do right, even though I am lazy physically. I do it soley for my own enjoyment, too. Many people are like this, especially geeks. Voting over the internet would be perfect for us. I don't think that there is any connection between physical laziness and mental laziness.
So, in summary, if people could vote over the internet, then more people would vote. Specifically, the physically lazy yet mentally active people who were too lazy to leave the house before even though they cared about the issue.
------
I've been thinking about this, and it makes me wonder if the term "third party" is really sufficient any more. Clearly there's a difference between a national third party with a numerical chance of winning or a shot at enough of the popular votes to get matching funds, and a third party with a candidate on the ballot of a couple of districts in one state. Perhaps the latter should be refered to as "fourth parties" or maybe "vanity parties" or somesuch. Something to indicate the quantitative difference between them and the Greens and Libs or Reform.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
if the Internet allows every schmoe to declare themselves a presidential candidate, will it help the political process?
Um...the internet doesn't allow every schmoe to declare themselves a presidential candidate...the constitution does. Remember, if you're over 35 and were born in the USA - you, too, can run for president.
but then again, one needs to remember that the american public doesn't technically pick the president. The electoral college does. Lucky for us...they've gone along with the popular vote every time...well, most of the time.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I absolutely need to know which candidate is best for me! Screw the soccer moms and retirement geezers, it's time for me to get a piece of the public pie. Right now!
The last thing I want is a government for the people. I want a government for me. I don't care about police and fire salaries, or manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas. I just want my tech stocks to go back up. Who cares about Pinochet and Castro, I want to know which candidate will strap Bill into the chair.
It doesn't much matter how much the candidates kiss up to the television and print media, as long as they don't touch the internet media, I'm fine. Al and Tipper can label and ban Dr. Dre all they want, I don't care anymore, cause he's against napster, and that's all that counts.
I don't care about Russia, China, India or Pakistan. I don't care about the price of the dollar against the yen or euro. The WTO can rule the world as long as they don't rule me. Bush can execute the mentally disabled and Gore can continue skimming tobacco profits. Why should that concern me? It's not tech related. I just want to sleep in my little coccoon for the next four years. If any candidate can promise me that, they have my vote.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I've noticed that over the years, with few exceptions, the two parties have converged on most things. There's still differences, but both of the candidates are going to go for the big money on the important internet issues. I would imagine neither of them have any idea what DeCSS is, let alone it's importance. Napster they'll say is bad and move on to the next question. The others don't have a snowball's chance in hell, so nobody cares. I think it's telling that none of the major candidates thinks that Vote Smart and similar services are worth acknowledging. Meanwhile, they're willing to hire web designers to create their own web pages to show how progressive and interested they are in the Internet.
http://www.issues2000.org/Ralp h_Nader_Technology.htm
| Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
My first reaction was: it is not an election year. But hey, it's a US site, so fair enough. But then I thought - maybe people in other nations should be allowed to vote in the US presidential elections. After all, we are affected by the decisions of the US government. Remember "no tax without reps"? Maybe "WE the people of planet earth ..." should get a say.
I am anarch of all I survey.
I don't suppose Gore actually attempts to take credit for inventing TCP/IP or the FTP protocol or anything like that. At least I hope not; that would be as pathologically delusional as Reagan "remembering" being there in person, in uniform, when U.S. soldiers liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945.
I have a old book published in 1990, Dvorak's guide to PC Telecommunications (John Dvorak & Nick Anis). It's full of quaint tips on how you can hook up your 2400 baud modem to connect to a variety of BBSs. It came with two 5-1/4 discs with PKZip, Qedit, and Telix SE, a terminal program for DOS. Recently I was dusting my bookcases and I took a glance at it for nostalgia's sake, where I found this comment. In the first chapter, Introduction to Telecomputing (page 9), Dvorak & Anis write the following - I quote the entire paragraph for context and flavor:
The current horizon in communication speeds is linked
to the development of the Integrated Services Digital
Network (ISDN) currently just coming to market via the
local Bell operating companies. These essentially
digital telephone links, capable of 64000bps
communication, elimante the need to modulate
data into tones (see the ISDN discussion in Chapter 19).
At 64Kbps (kilobits-per-second) PC communication
should become nearly effortless. Senator Albert Gore of
Tennessee is advocating the development of a national
data communications highway connecting universities,
laboratories, and educational facilities, transmitting
at a rate of 3 gigabits (10 to the ninth power) per
second. That's fast enough to send the Encyclopedia
Britannica over the telephone from one computer to
another in less than a minute!
That's the way two professional tech writers saw it back in 1990 or so. Evidently they considered Gore's political sponsorship of that yet-unnamed "data communications highway" was significant enough that they mentioned his name, and no one else's, when they alluded to it.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
1) DARPA's projects are more a matter of their internal organization than anything any politician has had any influence over. Newt Gingrich learned FORTRAN in the early 70's because he forsaw somthing similar to the Internet eventually forming-- but while he encouraged that kind of research, he never pretended to have been responsible for it.
Many people have already pointed out that much of the real progress on the Internet came as a result of people dodging regulations and oversight-- not because of them.
2) The administration Gore is a part of has produced the Clipper Chip, restrictions on encryption export, lawsuits defending the Communications Decency Act, encouraged trial lawyers to sue virtually everyone for everything, nearly gave everyone a National ID Card, and now gives us Carnivore. Gore is like that guy in marketting who kept telling you how to code your product, and then when you ignored him and the product was a success, claimed the credit.
3) I don't know what you mean by 'frat boy image'-- I think your dislike of Bush is just painting him as that. Bush's view is that the government should stay out of people's coding-- which I pretty much agree with. I don't like everything he stands for, but he's the best that's out there. It takes about five years for an effective bill to get signed after wading through all the bureaucracy-- and two or three years for the conditions of technology to change. So I don't see what legislation could be passed to regulate the internet which wouldn't be obsolete two years before it was signed.
George W. will let coders code while he worries about running the government agencies we have. Gore will try to push for the same things Clinton did: Clipper chip, national ID's and Carnivore. If he did know more about technology, that would just make him more confident that he could regulate it. Gore's talking nice to us now because he's running for office. At least Ralph Nader doesn't already have a track record of being against us.
I do wish that they would all fill out the Vote Smart questionaires. Most of the congressmen did-- I remember using it to check up on Jerry Doyle (Garibaldi on B5-- running for Congress from LA).
Not sure if Brin's idea would be the best way to go, but no doubt Earth had plenty of neat ideas. When I found Slashdot I immediately wondered if the moderation system was inspired by Earth.
Yeah, this is topic-drift in action...moderate as you see fit.
numb
Too bad it's Sunday and no one will read this. If it's true (I just finished deleting a few urban legends from my email box), it informed me. Assuming all the facts are true, the most cynical possible spin on it would be something like this:
Someone with a connection to Oak Ridge (in Al's home state) or DoD or somesuch puts a bug in Al's ear that they'd really like some pork for a network project they're working on. In an effort to dress up the pork, Al (or one of the other co-authors or co-sponsors) tosses around some language about this bringing computing to the masses. A few decades of sweat, genius, and innovation from people who had nothing to do with Gore, and voila! Al's claiming he invented the internet...
Even in that cynical light, Al doesn't come off looking too bad. Making laws that help your constituents and your election most immediately, but that include provisions that could let everyone benefit is how it's supposed to work. Sure, if Al's not there, someone else figures out that two computer heads are better than one, but the point is that he was there and he did do it and he didn't hold it up or insert some lame-ass provision about late-term abortions or whatever.
I'm not ready to have him replace Vint Cerf, but I think Al can take some credit. (Assuming the above is true.)
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
But what if I end up going with Nadar? Nader actually supports same-sex marriage, so will he get me into hell just as well, or will it count as a protest vote and not be damned. I need to know this from a spiritual expert such as yourself.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
... on Larry King Live, he claimed to have invented the Internet. Later on, his spokespeople claimed that he was exhausted, was speaking off-the-cuff and made an error. I'm inclined to believe him, just because it's so boneheaded of a mistake to make that I can see how it'd take someone to be falling-down tired to make it.
I don't think I'd like to see online voting in national US elections, at least not yet. My main problem with it is that it's possible that whoever is running the servers for where you vote had absolutely no idea what they were doing. In that case, they are prone to attacks. Even if they are getting simple DoS attacks, it may prevent a lot of people from voting. It's really hard to DoS a physical poll location.
;-) Browne, Buchanan, Bush, Gore, Hagelin and Nader are all getting at least some coverage (though I've seen the least for Browne), though I'm not sure who's on the ballots (that varies state-to-state).
Just think what could happen if a certain troublemaking group got all of their members to vote at a certain time (say, they got everyone to vote within an hour-long window), and the rest of the time, they were DoSing the servers. That could have dramatic effects.
I do think that online voting could get a lot more people out voting, as it would only be a 5-minute job, whereas physically going to a poll location, standing in line, etc., could take quite a while.
Regardless, I think this year will have a higher number of people out there voting. However, it's hard to know how things will go. There does appear to be a broader field this year in the Presidential race, which I believe will increase interest. (to be fair, I'll go alphabetically
Hmm.. I should ask -- does anyone have good information about how the Electoral College all works? I know that there are 535 votes in it, but how do those votes get made? Is it just a single person's choice, or do they choices get made by seeing the popular vote in a particular area? Does it vary from state-to-state?
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Ski-U-Mah!
voter.com has been balanced, timley, informative and enlightneting.
Personally, I can't wait for the debates on the issues. I'm looking forward to hearing Leiberman and Gore get on stage to hammer out their divided points of view on so many issues. :)
Not that I know anything about Malaysia, but I think Korea's experience with MS might awaken some local tech businesspeople to the potential pitfalls of MS "helping" the government. I'm sorry I don't have a link, but Linux Today did a whole series on it a while back. Look for articles regarding the president of MS Korea resigning.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
I recently did a study of the Internet and voting habits... it's not anywhere near publishable yet, but I'll get to it eventually. Basically, what I found is that Internet voting is probably a long way off in terms of security and economic feasibility. However, what the Internet will do is allow easier and cheaper campaigning and donations. Ironically enough, the two candidates who really "got it" in terms of leveraging the Internet were Bill Bradley and John McCain. (McCain made a *huge* return on investment from his web site through online donations.) Bush's web site did very well for him in terms of donations, as did Gore's.
As for where the major candidates stand on technology, look at their economic and political views. IMHYCIAMLCO (in my humble yet completely informed and most likely correct opinion) Bush actually represents the best hope for maintaining Internet freedom. His brand of laissez-faire capitalism will ensure that bad things like sales taxes on net purchases don't occur. His moral views make him a possible supporter of mandatory filtering, but I think he'll probably be more likely to let individual libraries and schools decide. (Remember, Republicans aren't the tools of big business like a lot of people think - it was Orrin Hatch, a Republican, who finally stood up to the RIAA and Hilary Rosen.)
Al Gore is probably more "in tune" with technology, but he's also more likely to use the net as a source of tax revenue, which would severely damage e-commerce. He's also just as likely as Bush, if not more so to enact mandatory filtering legislation. Gore's activist-government views are probably in the long run bad for the Internet. (Want to see DeCSS go by-by? Gore's your man. The Democrats are heavily funded by the big studios and record companies. The RIAA and the MPAA members are all big Democratic contributors.)
Buchanan probably thinks computers are tools of Satan. He'd definately not raise internet taxes, but he'd probably enact draconian censoring legislation.
Nader would probably be fairly hands-off in Internet issues, which makes him a good candidate on this issue. I disagree with 99% of what he says, but at least he's honest about his liberal philosophies.
``Yes I know he won't win...''
Lots of people knew Jesse Ventura wouldn't win.
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Ski-U-Mah!
Google is my friend:
How the Electoral College Works
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Ski-U-Mah!
I don't know anything about Brown, but I want to reply to something you said:
-----
While not a geek, he does understand the economy, and the high-tech sector has been one of the less-regulated (which is why it's so hot), and I'd much like to keep it that way.
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I'm not so sure this is true. Remember, if it was not for a huge goverment program related to cold war defense spending, we wouldn't have the internet at all. I'm not just talking about Arpanet either; I'm talking about all the money the goverment spent developing the entire high tech sector. We needed high power computers and networking to develop weapons, crack Soviet codes, and for a million other reasons related to the cold war effort. Only the goverment has the resources to take on projects that are really expensive, or may not bear immediate profit. That's why the space station is a goverment sponsered project. In 20 or 40 years, maybe space flight will get cheap enough, and the private sector can take over.
Some types of regulation is good, particularly when it's about standards, fair pricing, and worker rights. Lack of regulation is why the US is much further behind other countries when is comes to wireless. Don't even get me started about salaries. I know right now those of us in the tech sector are enjoying ourselves; lots of work and competitive wages. I wonder what we will all be saying in a few years. Maybe when all our software jobs are farmed out overseas, or given to H1B1 visa holders, we'll be screaming for Nader's (or someone like him, I'm not recommending him for president) help. Maybe then we'll want to unionize. You never know.
Just don't try to pretend the tech sector is somehow magical and immune to the same problems other areas of the economy are. It always happen like this; some new great thing comes out, workers enjoy a period of power during the disruption, and then the old institions realign themselves to absorb the new idea and everything returns to the way it was. Read your history if you don't think I'm right.
Peace, or Not?
It's not that the people should elect experts on the issues. Even in ancient times, I doubt that this was possible. For one thing, it's impossible to know what all the issues are going to be during a politician's tenure. For another, there are just too many issues for each representative to be an expert in all of them.
No, rather than electing experts, people are supposed to elect representatives whose judgement they trust. You are selecting someone to represent your interests at a governing body--but you don't always know exactly how each of those interests will present itself. You don't really want an expert in there, whose personal views you may or may not trust... instead, you want someone who you can rely on to make decisions in your stead. Think of representatives more as proxies than as managers. That's all they are supposed to be.
I'm not saying it works that way now--you're spot on when it comes to special interests and other observations--but that's how it was originally intended. And that's the problem with advocating a technocracy. Frankly, there is too much involved in governance which simply comes down to a matter of personal opinion rather than expert technical decision. Experts cannot help much with such decisions. The ephemeral 'will of the people' is not subject to a technical decision. People are not always, or even often, logical.
No relation to Happy Monkey
This election starkly pits a Geek against a PHB. Bush is supposed to be the normal guy pitted against the geeky Gore. It seems impossible for the media to observe that someone can be both likeable _and_ a geek. People who can't find a flaw in Gore's thinking or integrity choose to label him "stiff" or a "wonk." I can't imagine any group more likely to have suffered from this insipid tactic in their own personal experience than Slashdotters.
A Geek who votes for Bush is ratifying the unspoken principle that good people don't think and thinking people aren't good. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, because Bush is PHB all the way on the issues. But there I go name calling.
BTW, how do you delete a post on Slashdot? I mispelled a word in the subject of my last post. Darn!
What I want to know is:
:) )
Will America work after Bush or Gore is elected?
(note: I'M BEING FUNNY HERE - LAUGH - I'm not trying to troll
Would the quiz cover local current events like polluted water in the local reservoir? Or would it instead focus on world events?
That would, I suppose, depend on the type of election -- local, regional, or national. If you've got more then one tier, you take more then one test.
Then which kind of events? Economic? Social? Political?
Well, why not all of the above? Such a system wouldn't have to ask "hard" questions, just questions on the "major" issues. True, the system tends to self-define the "major" issues, but one could expect even one apathetic to the current trendy debates to at least be aware of them.
(Keep in mind that I'm not really serious about this; it is more of a thought exercise then anything else.)
The pool of questions and the range of options are too broad; there would wind up being a bias in the test, even though it would not be deliberate.
I think you could avoid a bias by using random selection of topics and questions. You might "bias" the test against people who aren't very current on the issues, but that is rather the point, after all.
The whole concept reminds me of the Jim Crow- type tests...
That comparison is inescapable, but I think there is a difference: The Jim Crow laws tested (relatively) unrelated, general skills, because an unwanted demographic (recently freed slaves) did not have those skills. The idea here, instead, is to actually establish an objective and rational requirement for suffrage. Namely: Are you familar enough with the canidates and their stands on the issues that you can make an informed decision? The question of whether it is even possible to develop such a metric is, of course, the crux of the matter.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I've been very happy with Jesse as Governor, although I didn't expect him to win. I expected things to go Humphrey, Coleman, Ventura, when it actually went Ventura, Coleman, Humphrey.
;-)
Looking back, I still think Humphrey would have been a good choice. He did a lot of good stuff for the people (IMHO) when he was Attorney General of MN. I think he would have continued to do good things. IMHO, Coleman would have just sat there and looked Kennedy-esque. However, Ventura has not been afraid (most of the time) to rile things up, and that's the way our representatives should behave, again IMHO.
Now, you look at the current list of candidates. How do you think they'll behave? Bush: sit there and look pretty. Gore: sit there and look pretty. Buchanan: Rant about moral corruption. Hagelin: sit there and meditate
I still know next-to-nothing about Browne, so I don't know what he'll do. Nader has been making noise for a long time, and I would expect him to continue to do so as President. That's why I'm voting for him.
Of course, that isn't the only reason. I like a lot of what he has done regarding getting corporations to produce decent products rather than producing scandalous profits. Perhaps he is overboard on some parts of his platform, though don't forget that our Constitution is designed to handle that. We're supposed to have representatives that test the boundaries.
--
Ski-U-Mah!
It's less of a "waste" if two people vote for Nader, even less if three, and so on. So feel better about voting Green, 'cause I'm going for Ralph too. Yes I know he won't win, yes I know, corporate knee-puppet George "duh-byuh" Bush and the ghastly pro-corporate robots he'll appoint to the Supreme Court, etc., etc.. But I'll be God damned if I'll vote for a Democratic candidate who picks a VP who has come out in favor of destroy^H^H^H^H^H^H^H"privatizing" Social Security.
Enough, DNC, basta!
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
: It was the 1980s and I was pitching a column on how middle class
: women could solve the fabled man shortage by marrying blue collar
: men. The editor screwed up her expensively maintained face and
: said, "But can they talk?" - Barbara Ehrenreich
The original idea behind representative democracy is that the candidates would be experts on issues that the general public would have no time to learn.
:) This should be a fun thread :)
But this turned out not to be the cast. They are as ignorant as the rest of us. They know about politicing, about personalities, but they don't know much about Policy.
An MBA friend of mine told me that a good manager needs to know two things: 1. What to do 2. How to get the right people to do it.
Successful politicians are adept at #2. They are clueless about #1.
Instead, their conception about what to do comes from lobbying groups - don't read me wrong, KatzFans: I'm not just talking about corporate lobbies. Even so-called "grassroots" groups are often known to push an agenda that is good for the "vocal minority" but bad overall.
Who understands #1? I'm probably not going to make a lot of friends saying this BUT... there are people who study the issues, and the effects of various actions. You may argue with the methodologies, you may argue with the results, but our best ideas of what to do come from the so-called "empirical" social scientists. Yup, maybe even that word "empirical" hides the fact that they pull stuff out of their asses - but everyone else does this, with the exception that everyone else's ideas don't necessarily fit the data!
Winston Churchil famously states that democracy is an awful system of government, but it's better than anything else.
But what we have isn't a democracy. It's an elected aristocracy. What separates politicians from me and you is blood (how did Al Gore and Dubya get started in politics).
What I propose is a better system is an elected technocracy - what would separate politicians from me and you is that they have studied the causes, effects and solutions to various problems affecting society. These "Philosopher Kings" would know that "#1 most important thing" for managers to know. What to do.
Discuss amoungst yourselves
> And finally, there's more important issues than your own job, geek toys and freedom to ignore IP.
Yep. IMO the primary reason the liberties of the citizenry keep eroding in the USA is that people tend to vote for the candidate who promises them the best deal in terms of material goods.
I suppose a nation of people who vote away their freedoms to have a bigger stick of butter on their plate deserve what they get, but I wish they would wait until after I die before they did it.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Republicans are an increasingly Libertarian party nowadays. Ideologically pure Libertarians might sneer at them, but the main attractive element of the Republican party is that they are less statist than the Democrats. Republicans have evolved away from the sort of bluenose moralizing that is more symbolized by Tipper Gore than anyone else this election. And the record of FBI and IRS abuse by Clinton is alarming to many. By the Nixon yardstick, Clinton is three orders ofmagnitude more abusive of govenrment power.
A related attraction among the same not-so-firebrand libertarian conservatives is that the Republicans hew closer to the Constitution than do the Democrats. Now if you think the U.S. Constitution is an outdated institution, or a "living document," or the dead ideas of dead white men, then that holds no attraction. But there is a sizeable number of people in the U.S. dedicated to restoring the plainly understood ideas of the Constitution to everyday use. Which comes down to the idea that nations, much less international institutions, should stick to making and preventing war, and leave almost everything else to governments that are closer to the people.
Lastly, Republicans increasingly represent competency in government. A Republican mayor cleaned up New York, and George Bush helped Texas move up the education rankings more quickly than anyone thought possible.
In contrast, the Democrats still never saw a tax that wasn't too low. They are still beholden to trade unions that, in the U.S. anyway, are rife with corruption and mob influence, and are now confined to highly regulated old industries and government employees becuase they have failed almost universally to attract any New Economy workers. I cannot think of one way in which the Democrats have changed since the 1960s - if anything, the whole union/public-sector orientation is less mainstream than when unions mattered and public education worked.
All this, of course, is my view. But I'm a pretty typical Republican in these times: Gap chinos, not Sanz-a-belt polyester slacks; Drive a SAAB, not a Buick; Download MP3s (legally, from MP3.com), thinks the DMCA is awful. I am why Republicans are hard to demonize. We look like you.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Regarding political tools, http://www.issues2000.org might be helpful; it lists each major candidate's stand on just about every conceivable issue. I haven't really examined it in-depth, but it appears pretty objective and even-handed.
As for who is the "geek" candidate, I'd say Gore probably fits the geek image better than anyone else (George W.'s frat boy "might not know much but I can hire advisors" mentality seems diametrically opposed to what most geeks hold dear). And yes, Gore didn't invent the Internet, but he was instrumental in getting government funding for DARPAnet, and as far as politicians go, he's one of the most informed on technological issues. Personally, I'd like to finally see someone in the White House who's on the right side of environmental issues (while I believe George W. would pretty much try to gut the EPA, which is what Reagan tried to do in the 80's).
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Part of the reason for making voting available
through the Internet, has to be increasing
the number of voters.
I'm not really sure about the election system
i the US, but here in Norway, online elections
has been discussed as well.
The reason why it hasn't gained that much support,
is that most of the people that don't vote, probably isn't the kind that would be bothered
enough to vote online either.
The problem with an election isn't to get people's
asses up for the election, but making sure that
people KNOW enough about the candidates to make
the election interesting.
Making people vote isn't helpful if they only
vote randomly.
I've had the option of voting for several university-elections, but the campaigning is so
small and uninteresting that nobody votes, even
though it is exceptionally easy, and only takes
a minute.
I don't know anything about the candidates, so
why should I vote?
Voting online may help a tiny bit, but the real
issue is getting enough people interested in politics to actually CARE who wins the election.
I think it's probably worth mentioning for the benefit of the US voters that the Reagan-Bush dynasty makes the rest of the world more than a bit nervous. When palpable idiots get elected, it's because they're being "run" by more competent people behind the scenes. (The fact that Reagan was a millenialist with access to thermonuclear launch codes didn't help any).
A few people have mentioned that they think voting for a minority candidate is a "waste": not so. Visible support for a minority candidate causes the majority candidates to shift policy in the hope of preventing too great a vote loss. When the Front National (French Nazi party) started polling double-digit percentages of the popular vote, French politics lurched to the right for a while as the main parties tried to keep voters who might otherwise have drifted within the fold (sound familiar, M$ watchers?)
Thus a vote for [minority candidate of your choice] actually helps the agenda that that candidate is pushing, whether or not he or she stands a chance of getting fifty-percent-plus-one of the popular vote. It is in this way that our Liberal Democrat party, whose best electoral performance was at the '97 elections, when they came a close third, keep the two main parties more or less honest.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
I will vote Nader! Oh, wait a sec... I can't vote! I guess I'll just be sitting at home staring at the tube to see what happened on the what's-her-sexy-face's show, or maybe just take the SUV up to ambercomie and fitch to get some new gear to impress the honnies... Better make sure I get home in time for curfew, I'd hate to be out having fun when the people I didn't vote for say I shouldn't.
The reason that sound like crap is because it is. I'm 16, that's the world they give me, and I'll tell em where to shove it, or at least I would if I could vote. Don't follow the stereotype that all kids are morons who belive whatever channel 1 tells them to. I think the passive and active neglect/repression/discrimination of minors and the elderly (this is know as "Agism") is way out of control. Nader (and biafra) are going to try and make it so I can talk back to the people who keep telling me how to live.
We're all Americans, so why don't we all get to determine the decisions that affect America? People say he's a joke and will only undermine the democrats' percentage of the vote, letting bush in so it can be the 1950's all over again. That's the same thing as saying "I can't stop pollution all by myself, so i'll just chuck the beer can on the side of the road". Didja hear about seattle? Or washington? Or Philly? or soon to be LA? People can change things if they belive they can, and unity is key.
Sorry if that's a little too rantish... i just wish I could vote, and I encourage you to vote for Nader and help stop agism
So quick with fear you tiny fools!
If you look past your preconceptions and prejudices, you might be surprised. William F. Buckley, an extremely influential conservative, said that The War on Drugs is Lost, and that we need to take a different approach to the problem.
As for the other issues that you mentioned, many Republicans disagree about the proper role of the federal government. The Republican Party is not monolithic. There are libertarians, evangelical Christians, small business owners, gun owners, pro-lifers, isolationists, social conservatives, economic conservatives and many other groups. The same is true of the Democratic Party. You have to look at both parties and pick the one you feel most comfortable with.
Any time someone says that the X party is in favor of, or opposes, a specific issue, you can bet that the truth is more complicated.
I'm a Republican and a card carrying member of the ACLU and the NRA.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I do not know that it is such a good idea to stop technology and roll it all back to 1900 or 1920 or whatever to statisfy the implementation of the demand.
Another problem is the inherent insanity that many people have on the subject of world government. Many people are deathly afraid of losing the integrity of their culture, be it, american, latino, micro-serfdom, or whatever.
Political leaders have been using this tactics since the dawn of time. There is a tremendous fear of immigration in the USA. Alot of folks look at the standard of living south of the border, and do not want people who produced that culture living in the USA.
It echoes the situation of a person who has won the lottery. Every unknown relative, high school friend, etc. since the dawn of time wants to take advantadge of the winner's good luck. never mind the scam artists, etc. who are all to willing to spend tremendous effort in trying to rip people off, and loath putting in similar effort to actually being creative and productive, etc.
To some extent, the USA is seen as having won the lootery of history, and every one wants a hand out, their piece of the action (and yes, lootery is a deliberate ironic mispelling)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
So freedom is defined as the right to kill unborn children? How about infanticide and euthanasia?
I happen to be pro-choice, because I believe that a foetus is not a human being until it can survive outside the womb. However, I recognize that good arguments can be made for other positions on the issue.
I feel more comfortable with a conservative justice that interprets the Constitution according to its plain reading, than with a liberal justice that treats the Constitution as a springboard for social engineering and who believes that the parts that he finds objectionable are obsolete and can be ignored.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I don't care to join in on any Christian bashing, but I have studied some history, and I don't come to the same conclusions that you do. To wit:
> You're wrong; technological developement thrives in periods with relative social stability, where lots of people get a chance to an education/information.
I would like to agree with this, but it seems far too general. For instance, aviation technology grew by leaps and bounds during two world wars, and nuclear technology, computational technology, crypto technology, synthetic materials, etc., all benefited much from the disorder of WWII. I'm a big fan of social stability and education for the masses, but I think sometimes it is disorder, and trauma, that prove to be the mother of invention.
> Most North-Western countries are founded on principles established by christians such as freedom of religion and speech, it is true, check out your countries history if you don't believe me.
Actually, many of "our" (USA) traditional liberties can be traced directly back to pagan Indo-European traditions. E.g., direct participatory democracy was "invented" in pagan Greece. The Romans, under the Republic, elected their representatives (essentially by vote of all men elgible for military service), and also elected Tribunes to protect themselves from unjust laws and arbitrary acts of the other elected officials. (In the abstract, the Tribunes played much the same role for them as the Supreme Court does for us when ruling on a civil rights case or striking down a law as unconstitutional.) These privileges in the historical nations are apparently derived from an even more primitive substrate, e.g. in the extremely barbarous Germanic nations the "kings" apparently ruled at the grace of the "citizens" (= military class).
Moreover, it is not obvious that the USA's supposed freedoms of religion and speech are to be attributed specifically to Christian values. Many Christian cultures have certainly enforced specifically opposite values. I think instead the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights should be attributed to the fact that 13 sovereign states were surrendering a big part of their sovereignty to a newly created central government, and wanted to protect their own cultural values against the whims of that government and/or the other states.
> Historically christianity has provided the North-Western world with such a stable social framework in genereal.
True, but almost every religion has done the same for its own society. And that system seems to work because religions, when well entrenched, established a "norm" that is in fact very coercive, since it is believed to be handed down from on high rather than worked out by humans as a compromise solution to essentially unsolvable problems. (The burning of witches and heretics and mistreatment of various other types of "deviant" is not necessarily a theological problem. Rather, it is a "social" problem in the sense that nonconformists threaten the comfortable stability of society.)
> Northern European christians fought wars against them and when they won established freedom of religion and speech principles. American 'pilgrims' came and studied this phenonemon and integrated it into the usa or whatever it was called back then.
Actually, the "pilgrims", who are idealized in American mythology as dissidents who fled to North America for political asylum due to their "persecuted" religion, are the same party who, back home in England, overthrew the government in a religious revolution and put the dictator Oliver Cromwell into power about a generation later. This is not, IMO, a very compelling endorsement of Puritanism. Nor does it support any portrayal of them as champions of liberty.
That's not to say that their case has not had an impact on the Bill of Rights; rather, it points out that history does not usually suffer simple moralistic interpretations without filtering out a lot of relevant fact first. (Indeed, I suspect the Cromwellian episode was still relatively fresh in the Founding Father's minds when they wrote the BoR, since the whole sorry affair had only wound down about 100 years before. It probably stood in their minds much as the American Civil War does in ours, and one of their foremost thoughts would probably have been "How do we design a government where that kind of thing will not happen?", just as we probably would ask w.r.t. the ACW, if we were to write a new constitution today.)
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What does this mean? "geeks" at this point is still a largly economic lable. "geek politics" can be linked almost directly to their econmoic status (both the amount of money made and how they make it) and certain international and trade issues. On the social issues that most divide the two major parties and in some ways polarize 3rd parties, geeks have no consensus that I have ever noticed. There is a good libertarian streak, but there are plenty of xtian geeks, gay geeks, pro choice geeks, pro life geeks, pro or anti dealth penalty and geeks of every other stripe. Note the Greens vs Libs arguements we have had here already, with both being touted as a "geek" party.
So, we will vote as voters, just as diverse as if we were a writers forum or a mothers forum. But the political sniping that is sure to emerge from this thread despite all hope will be fun to watch.
- Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
There are lots of sites (like Issues 2000) that have information about presidential candidates, but don't forget the power of Congress and state & local governments.
Freedom Channel is one of the few sites that has issue statements from candidates for president, senator, U.S. rep and governor. The issue statements are video (so you get to look 'em in the eye), and there's additional information and links for each candidate (plus extensive profiles of Congressional incumbents from National Journal's Almanac of American Politics).
Freedom Channel is non-partisan and non-profit (with foundation support). They don't exclude third party candidates like many of the big-media sites do. They're a terrific starting point to learn more about any national, statewide or congressional candidate.
Why don't we use the same test that the INS gives to people who apply for citizenship? A prospective voter should have a basic knowledge of the history of the United States and the structure and function of the govrnment. See this page for a Washington Post article on the INS test, including sample questions.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Oh, except for corporate welfare. Except for the war on drugs and corporate welfare, the Republicans are pretty libertarian.
Oh, yes, and federal involvement in education.
OK, except for the war on drugs, corporate welfare, federal involvement in education, interventionist foreign policy, marital and other rights of homosexuals, internet censorship, ballot access, medicare and medicaid privatization, separation of church and state, the nature of juries, abortion rights, immigration, protectionist trade policies, victimless crimes, property tax, zoning, suicide rights, and flag burning, the Republicans are pretty libertarian.
But they do drive SAABs, I'll grant you that. (Post-GM SAABs, which are SAAB-lites.)
--
Republicans are an increasingly Libertarian party nowadays. Ideologically pure Libertarians might sneer at them, but the main attractive element of the Republican party is that they are less statist than the Democrats.
Speaking as a typical libertarian... I am really turned off by the contemporary Republican approach to foreign relations, which seems to be basically 'peace through firepower' and lots of alliances and military occupations. IMHO, we are pissing off a lot of people when we bully other nations around, and we are becoming more and more a target for terrorism, which is almost impossible to defend against.
The libertarian position on national defense and foreign policy has always made a great deal of sense to me. It basically boils down to a strong defense for our shores, free trade with all nations, and no entangling alliances or deployments in other countries. In other words, focus on defending our shores and quit making the rest of the world angry.
The War on Drugs is another big issue with me, but as you've mentioned there are some Republicans that are coming around, albeit solely for practical instead of moral reasons.
I also have a lingering problem with the Republicans over censorship and the Moral Majority / Christian Right crowd. Those people tried to ban my music when I was growing up. I agree, that influence is dwindling, but I'm still pretty wary of it.
Finally, there are a whole host of other issues on which the Republicans talk the talk - privatizing Social Security, bringing competition to education, right to bear arms, lowering taxes, etc. - but don't deliver the goods. I'm simply beyond impatient with them on these things. I'd rather devote my time and energy to building a third party movement that will actually do something to reduce the bloat and intrusiveness of our government, than to sit around and wait on either of the two major parties to do anything.
So, I wish the Republicans were more libertarian, but it seems to me as if the Republicans and Democrats are just drifting closer together in a big centrist lovefest as each party makes concessions to the other.
--
I picked up a copy of "De Re Metallica", a very old and classic book on mining and metallurgy. Originally written in Latin, it was translated into English by Herbert Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover (Herbert's wife). Not knowing much about Hoover, I was surprised to see his name on the book.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I like Robert Heinlein's suggestion: you should not be allowed to vote unless you can find the roots of y=9x^2+12x+4.
I think David Brin's idea, from his novel Earth, was better: You need to keep up on current events in order to be able to vote. After all, being able to find the root of a quadratic equation, while useful, really doesn't have that much bearing on political choices. But an understanding of "current events" at least indicates that you care enough about the issues to keep track of them, which is about the only objective yet meaningful qualification for suffrage I can think of.
Now, David Brin's system used a global computer system which monitored your usage of news media systems, which probably has too many privacy concerns to be practical. But perhaps some sort of randomly-generated, ten-question, current-events quiz could be used, and you have to score X% correct or better to vote.
This also lets you remove age requirements, as Heinlien pointed out: A nine-year-old girl may be able to vote while her father cannot. Which is fine and dandy, I think.
Also from Heinlien's Expanded Universe was this idea which I just loved: The test could be given in the same enclosed booth as the votes cast, so no embarasment is risked. Or, you could use it to improve the species: If you fail the test (whatever it is), the booth still opens -- but is empty!
(Not very nice, but you have to love the concept!)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
is the Internet going to affect how you vote because of faster dissemination of information?
The question is, what information is being disseminated faster? The same brain-dead journalistic cruft that's been disseminated for decades, that's what.
Face it, despite the fact that the Green Party has a website, they still really have next to no chance. The fact that their message is getting dissseminated faster isn't making people accept it any faster.
not only are smaller political groups getting far more publicity than before (because you no longer have to actually print out newsletters to send to readers--they can the information online), but the Internet has become increasingly a "balance" to the mainstream media itself.
This sounds like the Internet I like to think about. It might even be the Internet that I use. But it's not the Internet that, unfortunately, most people use.
Most people are now going online to find online versions of traditional media. MSNBC is the greatest example. Going online to find the rare gems is not the cool thing about the Internet, to the masses.
So therefore, it follows that Democrats are going to www.gore2000.com, and Republicans are going to www.georgebush.com. Democrats are not accidentally stumbling upon www.greens.org, and thereby deciding to vote for Nader.
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Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
We are in a country where our elected leaders are supposed to be there to represent us but in reality, they don't get where they are by doing that. The only people that they represent are those people with special access, people who control purse strings that can be opened for those campaign budgets.
We, a country that was founded because of a situation where there was "taxation without representation" have created almost exactly the same situation that caused the initial revolution! The hypocracy makes me sick.
Minnesota did something unheard of a couple of years ago, we elected a Reform Party candidate, Jesse Ventura to be our govenor. We did this knowing that he was not "normal" gubenatorial matterial. We had two other choices, both of whom were cut out of the same matterial as Gore and Bush. In a very real sense, the election of Govenor Ventura was a political revolution.
Yes, we have been the butt of jokes but our govenor can probably beat your govenor up! We also have a govenor who has added some real common representation. He really does play by a different set of rules. The changes are slow in comming but we can see them. I don't necessarily agree with all of them but I can see that he is really looking at things from the common person's point of view. He has made a few mistakes along the way and alienated powerfull groups (like the religious right) and so I don't know what his chances for re-election are but, I can at least say that I support him because he does represent me.
I think, that it is time for the common man to demand the same from Washington. I suspect that the internet is going to play a powerful part in that. Even if it is just to allow us a fast way to track our lawmakers, it is something. But if we can have a real influence on what they do, that would really be something!
Geeks, Unite!