Slashdot Mirror
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."
Thank you for being a friend
Traveled down the road and back again
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a cosmonaut.
And if you threw a party
Invited everyone you knew
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
And the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend.
called the iFart it emits odours at all electoral apps near you....
so google's looking to capture people's voting choices in advance of any election anywhere. Yeah, that's what we want. A system that prides itself on privacy and anonymity having all of its information duplicated to a commercial party. great idea.
please don't use this.
Is that going to be more accurate than the voting machines? And what will happen if there is a discrepancy?
no not that, google enters politics with a polling locator!
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.
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.
Cunt3ipes Jordan
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."
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.
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.
Google APIs. Here today, but gone soon.
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.