Tag: election08

Posted on

Barack Obama Declares; Techies are Amped

barack obama

Obama’s statements on broadband and net neutrality are being picked up appreciatively among the digerati:

Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy to compete in the digital age. Let’s set high standards for our schools and give them the resources they need to succeed. Let’s recruit a new army of teachers, and give them better pay and more support in exchange for more accountability. Let’s make college more affordable, and let’s invest in scientific research, and let’s lay down broadband lines through the heart of inner cities and rural towns all across America. We can do that.

Full transcript of the speech. Streaming video.

* BoingBoing
* SlashDot

See also:

Obama’s Remarks at TEchNet 2005

Obama Podcast on Net Neutrality

Also noted, Obama’s social networking concept at My.BarackObama.com

More here.

Posted on

John Edwards Hires Rocketboom’s Baron

This is just weird, huh? Chuck Raasch comments on this in his excellent blog for Gannett:

Edwards’s strategy, according to Kurtz, is to “go deep into the blogosphere.” The medium is a good part of the message: Edwards has his own Facebook and MySpace pages – and in the past, Edwards has bypassed “traditional” media in favor of bloggers. In an “interview” last week, Edwards tells Rocketboom’s Joanne Colan – a former British MTV VJ – that places like Rocketboom.com are “one of the best ways to reach people” as part of his campaign to change America “from the ground up.”

read the entire post.

Posted on

Election Day Belongs to WE, the people.

Free and fair elections, as we’ve heard over and over recently (in re: iraq) are the linchpin of a true democracy.
vote November 7
My recommendations are: take off the right/left hat and abolish words like “partisan” and “bias” and re-register as “independent” or “upright caucasian.”

Listening to the mud-slinging and standing by while the media sits back enabling and magnifying the ridiculum, I realize that it’s important to not lose focus on the matters at hand. For one day, we’re in control (at least to some extent).

OK, I’ll leave it there. I’ll be roaming L.A. country documenting for Video the Vote — more on the grassroots, non-partisan efforts recently launched tomorrow…

Freshly launched NewAssignment.net lists Nine Ways Citizen Journalists Can Cover the Election

For all in CA, here is a proposition party-style breakdown of this year’s assortment of y/n legislation.

Know the issues, know the candidates and don’t answer the phone or check the mail during the 72 hours of shadiness.

Posted on

Ring Them Bells Already: May Diebold-Gate Begin

Last week, former Maryland state legislator Cheryl C. Kagan was anonymously given disks containing source code to Diebold’s BallotStation and Global Election Management System (GEMS) tabulation software used in the 2004 elections.

A machine running on the same software version (4.3.15c) defined in the source code sent to Kagan was thoroughly hacked into and documented in September by Princeton’s Ariel J. Feldman, J. Alex Halderman, and Edward W. Felten in the 26-page “Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine” (view PDF, “Internet Christian minister” Rev. Bill McGinnis summarizes it here).

Kagan’s story was first reported last Friday in Baltimore Sun by reporter Melissa Harris.

An accompanying letter refers to the State Board of Elections and calls Kagan “the proud recipient of an ‘abandoned baby Diebold source code’ right from SBE accidentally picked up in this envelope, right in plain view at SBE. … You have the software because you are a credible person who can save the state from itself. You must alert the media and save democracy.”

No matter how or even if Kagan’s story is true, a crime, or whatever — it remains both ironic and suspicious that the one company authorized to make electronic voting systems in this country has kept their source code bottled up as if it contained the ingredients for Coca Cola’s secret syrup. Opening source code to independent professional reviewers and critics who may find bugs and other flaws should be mandatory for a company that for months has represented itself with broken HTML code on their home page (see http://www.diebold.com/dieboldes/).

(Coincidentally 2 men pleaded guilty this morning in the FBI investigation into stolen Coke “trade secrets.”)

Joe Strupp, of the newspaper industry watchdog Editor & Publisher asks, “Is Press Taking Possible Voting Problems Seriously?” (ABC’s World News Tonight is devoting a fair amount of programming to the issue.)

Kagan, a Democrat, is the executive director of the Freeman Foundation — a philanthropic community-focused charity — and is a noted critic of her state’s election chief and the Diebold voting systems. She said she’s been in contact with the FBI and intends to cooperate with any investigation.

Maryland’s deputy elections administrator claimed the disks contain “nothing that’s being used in this election.” Which is quite a suspicious thing to say in and of itself.

In other election season news, hasGoogle Earth new layers and placemarks with useful 2006 election info.