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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."
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.
what if they had asked black people to vote on wednesday instead to prevent long lines?
They did
Okay. Please don't even joke about that. There was a really extreme campaign in Florida where Republicans discouraged blacks, Hispanics, and other traditionally Democratic voters from going to the polls by saying things like, "If you have any outstanding traffic tickets, pay them before voting," and, "bring proof of citizenship," (and this discouraged people who WERE legitimately citizens, because they didn't really understand and they were afraid of losing what they had worked so hard to gain), and, of course, "election day changed to Wedsnesday." Many people think that this was a big part of why the Democrats lost Florida. It's not funny, regardless of which side loses. More examples: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A99749-2001May30?language=printer http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D05E5D6123FF935A2575BC0A9629C8B63 Not funny, not appropriate.