Online Politics - Will it Work?

It's another election year and it's bound to be one that we will remember, if only due to the changing face of the Internet that has already started with laws like the DMCA and the WIPO. Many of you are rightly worried about which candidate will be the best to vote for in terms of the jobs, the technology, and the freedom we all value so much. So here are a couple of questions from readers who are curious about the arrival of politics on the net, and the political tools both currently available and in development to help online voters make informed choices.

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?"

Comments

Let's NOT make voting easier!

[wowbagger]

I keep hearing/reading people saying that we need online voting to make voting easier.

BULLSHIT!

(and I'd use <font size=+5> if /. would let me do so!)
<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>

Lieberman on other issues

[phutureboy]

Lieberman is big on censorship, the v-chip, and has put a lot of pressure on the movie, tv, music and video game industries:

http://www.wirednews.com/news/politics/0,1283,38 055,00.html

Also, from http://www.freedomforum.org/news/2000/08/2000-08-1 0-01.htm :

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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The Internet HAS changed things

[RayChuang]

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.

3rd and 4th parties

[KahunaBurger]

Those people obviously have no chance of winning (simple math; no state has enough electoral votes), and can be safely discounted from major consideration. Anyone who can attract enough attention to have a theoretical chance of winning (ie. registered in enough states) should be included in things like the big televised debates, however. Right now, there's really only four parties that qualify (Repubs, Dems, Greens, and Libertarians; maybe one of the two Reform parties, we'll have to see)

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

Re:DARPAnet? bzzzzzzzzz wrong

[jmtpi]

Found in a column by Lars-Erik Nelson in the Daily News of New York published on May 5. (Sorry there's no link, but I the only place I know to find it is Lexis-Nexis.)

1. Gore did not claim to have invented the Internet. In an interview with Wolf Blitzer in March 1999, Gore said: "During my service in the U.S. Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
2. This claim is perfectly true. In March 1986, when computers were still something found mostly in laboratories, Gore sponsored the Supercomputer Network Study Act to link the nation's supercomputers into a single system.

This was his vision: "Libraries, rural schools, minority institutions and vocational education programs will have access to the same national resources - databases, supercomputers, accelerators - as more affluent and better-known institutions."

Three years later, after noticing that France was making strides with its Minitel home-computer network, Gore introduced the National High Performance Computer Technology Act. One of its aims was to "establish a high-capacity national research and education computer network."

His bill directed that the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which had created the forerunner of the Internet, "shall ensure that unclassified computer technology research is readily available to American industry."

In testimony to a House committee, Gore said: "I genuinely believe that the creation of this nationwide network . . . will create an environment where work stations are common in homes and even small businesses."

...

One of Gore's Republican colleagues, Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington, credited him at the time for introducing a bill that would "create [note that word] a high-capacity national research and education network to link up supercomputers and databases around the country."

In 1991, Gore reintroduced his bill to provide funding for development of a national computer network. He said: "Today, most students using computer networks are studying science and engineering, but there are more and more applications in other fields, too. Economists, historians and literature majors are all discovering the power of networking. In the future, I think we will see computers and networks used to teach every subject from kindergarten through grade school."

...

By the way, when he signed Gore's Internet bill, President Bush took credit for it himself. He said he had proposed it in his 1992 budget.

Ralph Nader on Technology

[ekmo]

http://www.issues2000.org/Ralp h_Nader_Technology.htm

Re:gore, did "invent" the internet!

[anonymous cowerd]

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

political tools

[nomadic]

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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I'm not sure online voting will solve anything

[GauteL]

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.

Oh, yes, the Republicans are libertarian!

[Tony Shepps]

Yup, except for the war on drugs, the Republicans are pretty libertarian.

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.)
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