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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."
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!
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.
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.
Is that going to be more accurate than the voting machines? And what will happen if there is a discrepancy?
By definition, any system (such as the "counting on fingers and toes" method) where the total number of votes counted equals the total number of votes cast is more accurate than voting machines.
Not that this has anything to do with the article, which is about Google informing voters about how to register, where to vote and what the trends are. This way you know which bumper sticker is least likely to get your car keyed in your county.