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Did You Vote? Now Your Friends May Know (nytimes.com)
A look at VoteWithMe and OutVote, two new political apps that are trying to use peer pressure to get people to vote. From a story: The apps are to elections what Zillow is to real estate -- services that pull public information from government records, repackage it for consumer viewing and make it available at the touch of a smartphone button. But instead of giving you a peek at house prices, VoteWithMe and OutVote let you snoop on which of your friends voted in past elections and their party affiliations -- and then prod them to go to the polls by sending them scripted messages like "You gonna vote?" "I don't want this to come off like we're shaming our friends into voting," said Naseem Makiya, the chief executive of OutVote, a start-up in Boston. But, he said, "I think a lot of people might vote just because they're frankly worried that their friends will find out if they didn't."
Whom Americans vote for is private. But other information in their state voter files is public information; depending on the state, it can include details like their name, address, phone number and party affiliation and when they voted. The apps try to match the people in a smartphone's contacts to their voter files, then display some of those details. The data's increasing availability may surprise people receiving messages nudging them to vote -- or even trouble them, by exposing personal politics they might have preferred to keep to themselves. Political campaigns have for years purchased voter files from states or bought national voter databases from data brokers, but the information has otherwise had little public exposure outside of campaign use. Now any app user can easily harness such data to make inferences about, and try to influence, their contacts' voting behavior.
Whom Americans vote for is private. But other information in their state voter files is public information; depending on the state, it can include details like their name, address, phone number and party affiliation and when they voted. The apps try to match the people in a smartphone's contacts to their voter files, then display some of those details. The data's increasing availability may surprise people receiving messages nudging them to vote -- or even trouble them, by exposing personal politics they might have preferred to keep to themselves. Political campaigns have for years purchased voter files from states or bought national voter databases from data brokers, but the information has otherwise had little public exposure outside of campaign use. Now any app user can easily harness such data to make inferences about, and try to influence, their contacts' voting behavior.
Drives like this always make me think something along the lines of "hey I know you're so disconnected and ill informed that you didn't know today was voting day so please go out and make an ill informed decision"... Still, maybe in aggregate it these things are for the best.
My wife registered as preferring one of the parties here in our state. And she has gotten over 100 pieces of mail from that party urging her to vote for their candidates. I did not register a party preference, and have only gotten a couple of pieces of mail urging me to vote. Her voting history has been blazoned across multiple cards in the mail in blatant attempts to shame her into voting. Mine was on one of the pieces of mail that I got. It seems like pretty soon we'll be getting mail telling us that it's time for us to buy more toilet paper because we'll be out next week...
They are not for the best. Basically these types of things just turn the electorate into a mob. We are not picking the next American idle here; this is serious. I think every citizen should be able to vote but those who don't want to take it seriously should do everyone a favor and butt out.
Voting is a right; however if you choose to exercise it you have responsibility to take it seriously. Frankly if election day rolls around you still need to be told, that it is election day, where to vote, and what the names of the candidates are - you have not done so. You have no business going to polls at this point IMHO.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
An old Asimov book used Multivac to question a single randomly chosen individual a number of seemingly random questions. From his responses it determined the proper outcome of the election for all districts. Obviously Asimov believed as you did but took it to an extreme level for a fictional story.
Amusing part is I read it Oct 2008, the story talked about the presidential election in Nov 2008. Think it was written in the 60s.
Just thought you might like to know is been a common theme for a while.