How Can Nerds Make a Difference In November?

Scott Aaronson offers an intriguing call for ideas on how nerds can supercharge the political process this year. He's clearly an Obama admirer and phrases his challenge this way: "What non-obvious things can nerds who are so inclined do to help the Democrats win in November?" But the question itself is not inherently partisan. The analogy Aaronson gives is to the Nadertrading idea in 2000 (which we discussed at the time). What's the Nadertrading for 2008? "The sorts of ideas I'm looking for are ones that (1) exploit nerds' nerdiness, (2) go outside the normal channels of influence, (3) increase nerds' effective voting power by several orders of magnitude, (4) are legal, (5) target critical swing states, and (6) can be done as a hobby."

Comments

I know I know!

[longacre]

Get a programming job at Diebold.

Re:I know I know!

[Anonymous Coward]

Spam all republicans with a message saying due to voting machine problems, and to avoid overcrownding on the few working termnals, Democrats are asked to vote on tuesday and republicans on wednesday.

Re:I know I know!

[somersault]

I think that's what he's wanting. Since this is slashdot, he's probably hoping someone rewrites his numbering scheme thus:

The sorts of ideas I'm looking for will have these qualities:

1. exploit nerds' nerdiness,
2. go outside the normal channels of influence,
3. increase nerds' effective voting power by several orders of magnitude,
4. ...
5. target critical swing states
6. can be done as a hobby.
7. profit!

Re:I know I know!

[Chris Burke]

When mentioning Diebold, it is always crucial to mention that they now call themselves Premier Election Systems, in an attempt to make people forget that they are "that" company.... you know, the one with broken and insecure voting machines.

But that doesn't make any sense! Our consultant from Accenture assures us that Premier Election Systems has a terrific and unblemished reputation, and has nothing to do with the disgrace that was Diebold's voting machine division!

Re:I know I know!

[ElizabethGreene]

The evil-er approach is to send 2 encrypted documents, don't rig the election, and only send the decryption key for the candidate that actually wins.

Tehe.. saves all that pesky "work".

Re:I know I know!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to see a t-shirt that says:

I know who you will be voting for on November 6th
-- Diebold

Re:I know I know!

[WiseWeasel]

You do NOT want to mess with the stupid people lobby... They are a powerful group.

Re:I know I know!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, spoken like a true Democrat, vote early, vote often.

Re:I know I know!

[somersault]

Actually, I like the giant puppets concept - could be the way to go. I propose we construct a giant papier-mache Clippy god to scare people away from the voting venue. He could utter such abominable sayings as you appear to be trying to vote - would you like me to rain down burning sulphur upon you and your descendants?. I think this covers most requirements. As for the swing states, we just have to try to convince them of the merits of SWT.

Re:I know I know!

[MythoBeast]

I blame organized sports, rampant consumerism and gaming. By focusing on earning enough money to buy the next gaming console, people don't have enough of their brain left to differentiate between politics and football.

Simple

[Nerdposeur]

Game the search results on the candidates. Especially for sites in the swing states.

Re:Real nerds...

[cashman73]

Great idea! I'm signing up for the CowboyNeal party today! It's about time we had a CowboyNeal option in national elections! =)

Re:My voting algorithm

[Utopia Tree]

"1. Vote third party." Go Ahead! Throw Your Vote Away!

Of course...

[rob1980]

Hack the Gibson.

Re:Real nerds...

[pieterh]

... would agree on the goals and vision and then spend years fighting language flame wars. They would create several hundred competing political systems which would then all be bought by Google.

There's actually two

[Chmcginn]

Close, but if you want to really fix electronic voting, there's one sure-fire way of doing it.

The other one is an EMP blast.

Re:How is that NOT Partisan?!

[houghi]

If you approach me with the mindset that I need to be voting for your candidate I'm probably not going to react well to it.

Well, I think you must vote republican.

Re:echo chamber

[daveime]

Margin of error is ±2%.

Good old Diebold eh ?

Re:Faking Christianity.

[stoolpigeon]

Yep - all of them. Every person in the country who labels themselves Christian is a simplistic idiot that can't understand even the most basic of things. Thank God I have an atheist friend to log into slashdot for me, interpret my grunt-like muttering and type up responses on my behalf. Gotta go back to putting down the women and colored folk now.