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Google Gets Into Politics With Civic Info API
mikejuk writes "The new Google Civic Information API can be used to look up comprehensive voting information for particular addresses in the U.S. such as the polling place, early vote sites, contests, and local election official contact information. At the moment the API is limited to voting information for elections in the U.S., but Google plans to expand the support to cover other countries and include other types of civic information. Google plans to use the API to power their own election tools, including an embeddable app anyone can use on their site."
Is that going to be more accurate than the voting machines? And what will happen if there is a discrepancy?
Did you even try to read the article?
This gives publicly available information on poling places and elected official contact information plus the election contests that an address is able to vote in.
Nothing about individual votes before or after an election.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
no not that, google enters politics with a polling locator!
huh wha?
"The Google Civic Information API can be used to look up comprehensive voting information for particular addresses in the U.S. such as the polling place, early vote sites, contests, and local election official contact information. The new API replaces Google’s Election Center API."
I don't see where it says "put your name in" or "tell us who you're going to vote for"....it seems to be a method to inform voters. God forbid we have an educated electorate.
Please don't just make shit up.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The type of company Google is is 115% irrelevant to the point made by the FP.
Thanks for participating.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Don't get too attached to this new API, it will probably go the way of the Dodo in a couple years, judging by Google's track record.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
I would not be surprised to see nominally politically neutral third party apps built on top of this interface that try to figure out what party you are likely to vote for via cross-referencing with various Big Data providers like BlueKai or Axciom and then, depending on which party commissioned the app, lying about polling place info (location, times, etc) or some other sort of dirty trick to discourage you from voting.
A smart "political hack" would only show the bad information a couple of times, so as to make it harder to prove that anything nefarious had gone on.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Incredible that parent has been modded up. A company decides to do something useful and responsible, and somehow it's seen as a conspiracy.
As an aside, years ago I worked with Kiwanis (a community service organization) on an initiative to promote political awareness among high school kids. At first I was concerned that they were going to try to push a particular viewpoint or agenda, but they made it clear that as an organization, for the purposes of this initiative, they were completely agnostic about it. Their mandate was to get people involved, and informed, so they could make their own decisions, because that's how the system works best. The system fails when you have a few informed people and masses of uninformed people who just vote for the candidate they think is the most attractive. So if that is Google's intent (which is the impression I get), it's an honorable goal. And making the API available seems to be an effort to give more people the tools to pursue that goal.
As long as Google doesn't start skewing the information (or, through a security hole, allows someone else to skew it), this is a good thing. There should be some sort of oversight to ensure that.
Since we are being off-topic with Golden Girls of all things, I would vote for Betty White over Romney or Obama in a heartbeat
Monstar L
It is not that incredible, a lot of moderators mod based on apparent insightfulness, without checking for things like grip on reality, or relevance to the actual universe. Sometimes good mods come along and correct things though.
"iFart in your general direction."
But can it tell me where I parked my Honda Civic?
bill=google.civics.findBill("SOPA").clone();
while ((bill.isPending()) && (!bill.isPassed()))
{
senator=google.civics.randomSenator();
senator.bribe(10000);
}
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
I don't see where it says "put your name in" or "tell us who you're going to vote for"
While the OP originally sounded crazy, I think you've ended up showing us how google is likely to use it.
It isn't like they need to ask you for that information, there is a good chance they've already got enough information to cross-reference into their identity records. If you aren't already logged into a google service at the same time your browser hits this api, chances are you've still left a trail of previous accesses to things like doubliclick.com and googleapis.com embedded in other websites that they've correlated with cookies or at least ip address and browser-fingerprint. Enough so that if they can't directly divine your identity, they'll still add your usage of these apis to the "phantom" profile that they have been keeping, just waiting to have your real identity linked in at some point in the future.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Very nice story with update
Considering that polling places can change (at least they do often in Florida) the accuracy of information is of high concern to me. I can't even get their map application to stop resetting phone numbers and addresses for our government office. Can't wait for the phone calls saying "google told me this was my precinct, " even though the official web server that shows locations is in the room next to me.
The headline is wrong, Google has been into politics for a long time. Google executives were (and no doubt still are) major contributors to Obama.
You can be pretty sure this app will be used to politely remind voters when and where to vote. But not all voters, just the ones who are located in districts that lean to the side the spammers supports and/or if you were tracked visiting websites sympathetic to their side.
Is there a "Winner" field? In some places, the winner will be known ahead of time.
But if this is run on iOS6 it might show total inaccuracies. The API might return valid voting locations if I put in the address of my local cemetery, or if I pass the API more than one address at a time. And we know that dead people can't vote, and that people can't vote more than once. Wait...what?
I know I don't know what I don't know.
Please don't just make shit up.
He can't help it - he's watched it done on Fox too much.
Google APIs. Here today, but gone soon.
Or hes watched Motorola and Google do it...
http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/27/googles-ilost-motorola-ad-faked-an-address-to-lose-ios-6-maps
The thing about fluoridation is that people used to really say that. So it made it into a certain famous movie, and now everyone knows it's a joke, so it's a special red flag for satire. But it's only a satire signal because it used to not be one.
We have way more media today, than in 1963. Everything is faster. Why cannot everything become a satire signal, and therefore though dilution, nothing be a reliable satire signal? The time will come, that crackpots will not be creative enough to say something which hasn't already been mocked. (This is uniquely true for conservative crackpots, because by definition, they have to say old things or else they'll be labeled liberal crackpots instead.)
I wonder if it's even possible to resist Poe's Law. Did you see this week's episode of South Park? There might come a day, when no one ever knows if someone else is joking or not.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This way you know which bumper sticker is least likely to get your car keyed in your county.
If you're not willing to risk getting your car keyed, then there's no real point to having a political bumper sticker.
Political bumper stickers are there to legitimize politicians and political points of view. The hope is that they will convince people to look more kindly upon a given idea, or perhaps research it. If there is no serious opposition*, then the battle is already won.
*(Keying cars is very bad form; there will always be a jerk in every political alignment; if there is no jerk who might conceivably key your car, then there is no real opposition to the idea.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
A cosmonaut? True, Betty White portrays an airhead/spaced out person in that show, but I believe the word you were looking for was confidant.