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

Re:Simple..

[bigstrat2003]

Yes, like abstension would have helped ... "Obama can't make a decision, or doesn't care about the issue".

McCain can't say that, since he didn't vote. It would've helped Obama a great deal to not vote on this one.

The whole point is, whatever decision he made, the opposition would have found a way to twist it to their favour.

Not if he didn't vote. Your opponent can't credibly criticize you for doing something he's doing. Obama is smart enough to know this, and voted yea anyway. He's a traitor to our people.