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First POST: Rethinking the Ad

BY Miranda Neubauer | Friday, November 9 2012

Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: After a rough election day, Republicans reconsider the way they campaign; some of the big online ad spends in the election; and more in today's roundup of news about technology in politics from around the web. Read More

First POST: Understanding the Data

BY Miranda Neubauer | Thursday, November 8 2012

Was this going to be Mitt Romney's transition website?

Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Did reporters find what might have been Mitt Romney's transition website? That and more in today's roundup of news about technology in politics from around the web. Read More

First POST: Obama's Win

BY Miranda Neubauer | Wednesday, November 7 2012

Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Here are some of the best reads around the web parsing Barack Obama's re-election win as it relates to technology in politics, all in today's roundup of news from around the web. Read More

First POST: Pulling the Lever

BY Miranda Neubauer | Tuesday, November 6 2012

Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Last-minute online ad pushes from both campaigns; election-day problems for voters casting a ballot in the wake of Hurricane Sandy; and more in today's roundup of news about technology in politics from around the web. Read More

As Election Nears, Mormon Democrats a Newly Significant Voice Online

BY Miranda Neubauer | Monday, November 5 2012

No matter who wins the election Tuesday, the campaign has helped establish an online voice for a population with a unique perspective in this election -- self-described Mormon Democrats and supporters of Obama. Read More

First POST: Taking Stock

BY Miranda Neubauer | Monday, November 5 2012

Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: As concerns begin to rise about last-minute changes to voting procedures in key states and hundreds of thousands of people in New York continue to struggle to stay warm and dry without power or heat, your First POST this morning takes a comprehensive look at how people are using technology to make it easier to vote, track Hurricane Sandy recovery and more. Read More

Online Tools to Help You Get from the Ballot Box and Back

BY Miranda Neubauer | Friday, November 2 2012

In just a few days the long presidential election campaign will be over, and — hopefully — the deciding votes cast. But Election Day will for some mean polling places changed in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, voter ID laws to comply with, potentially long lines to get to the voting booth and maybe even some unfamiliar decisions to make on the ballot.

There's an entire fleet of online tools to help voters through this process, whether they're dedicated to helping report problems at polling place or to get up to speed on where to vote and what to vote on. TechPresident has been compiling a list of election-day resources that we're ready to share. We think we got most of them but invite you to help by letting us know about any we've missed. We're also sharing an anyone-can-edit Google spreadsheet with the list we've found so far, and hope you can add to it.

Read More

First POST: Keeping Track

BY Miranda Neubauer | Friday, November 2 2012

Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: How New York City's tech sector is organizing itself to respond to Hurricane Sandy and more in today's roundup of news about technology in politics from around the web. Read More

First POST: The Shaming Begins

BY Miranda Neubauer | Thursday, November 1 2012

Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: A new Pew survey finds that Obama supporters are more likely to have been visited at home by someone talking about the campaign; inside a new push by progressive group MoveOn to use "social pressure" to get out the vote; and more in today's roundup of news about technology in politics from around the web. Read More

First POST: Clean-up

BY Miranda Neubauer | Wednesday, October 31 2012

Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: A round of anonymous anti-Obama text messages last night stoked a debate about what can and can't be sent to your phone; outing the man behind some of the most egregious fibs about Hurricane Sandy's impact on New York City; and more in today's roundup of news about technology in politics from around the web. Read More

News Briefs

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Cory Booker Hires Democratic Organizing Veteran Addisu Demissie To Manage Senate Run

Newark Mayor Cory Booker has hired a veteran of the Democratic organizing world Addisu Demissie to manage his run to succeed the late New Jersey Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. GO

ShareProgress Debuts Social Sharing Optimization Tools

ShareProgress, a left-leaning tech startup in downtown San Francisco, launched its social sharing optimization platform Tuesday after several months of testing with the progressive advocacy group CREDO Action. GO

New Organizing Institute to Move from Collecting Election Data to Organizing Election Officials

The New Organizing Institute, a progressive nonprofit that trains campaigners and is no led by former Obama for America data director Ethan Roeder, is launching a new initiative next week aiming to "fix that" for local elections. NOI will announce a national network where local election administration officials can congregate to share solutions to common issues. It's a transition for a team at NOI that had previously been managing the Voting Information Project, which collects data on polling places, election districts and voter registration deadlines and prepares it for third parties in machine-readable format. In the 2012 election cycle, backed by the Pew Charitable Trusts and partnered with Google, VIP made information available in all 50 states. GO

Russian SOPA Passed First Reading

A first draft of a law nicknamed “Russian SOPA” was approved by the Russian parliament last Friday, June 14. Like the original Stop Online Piracy Act, the bill will establish penalties and procedures for online copyright violations.

GO

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Czech Prime Minister Resigns Following Corruption and Surveillance Scandal

The prime minister of the Czech Republic resigned yesterday, irreparably damaged by a corruption scandal and the possibility of impropriety in his personal life. According to the Czech constitution, his entire government will also have to relinquish office.

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Mayors of New York City and San Francisco Announce "Digital Cities" Summit

The Mayors of New York City and San Francisco announced Friday that they're co-hosting meetings in the Fall and early next year to examine the "best practices" that lead to tech-enabled economic growth. The meetings are follow-ups to the initial Bloomberg Technology Summit held last year in New York City. This year's summit in New York ... GO

New York State Joins GitHub to Get Feedback on Open Data Policy

New York is the first state to publish an initial draft of its open data guidelines on GitHub to seek feedback from the public, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in a press release Thursday. GO

Brazilians Protest Forced Evictions on YouTube and in Mock World Cup

Tomorrow Brazilians who have been forced out of their housing in advance of the 2014 World Cup will stage their own “People's Cup” in Rio de Janeiro to draw awareness to forced evictions.

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A “Fix-Rate” for Corruption: Integrity Action Wins the Google Global Impact Award

“From wanachi (“citizen”) to up there,” Emmanuel Dzombo explains with an upward sweep of his hand, is how Integrity Action has begun to reverse the bureaucratic top-down approach that has often blocked development work in Kenya. Dzombo is a local leader in Chengoni, Kenya, a country that ranks towards the very bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index – at 139. The organization believes it could do more, and Google.org seems to agree. The Google Impact Challenge will provide the charity with £500,000 that will allow it to develop a mobile application for tracking and collecting data from citizens. GO

Crowdsourced "Danger Maps" Track Air, Soil and Water Pollution in China

Chinese citizens are exposing sources of pollution and other environmental problems by contributing to the partially crowdsourced website 'Danger Maps'. So far, the Chinese government is letting them get away with it.

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U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board To Meet Next Wednesday

A long dormant independent agency that was at least nominally supposed to exercise a modicum of oversight over the booming intelligence-industrial complex is scrambling to meet up next Wednesday, but the public will still be none the wiser about what it plans to do, since it is a closed door meeting. The only indication that the toothless ... GO

Despite Software Problems, Civic Hackers are Pedaling Bike Share Data

Reporters are shoaling around the news that New York City's new bike sharing system, Citi Bike, is benighted with problems stemming from its high-tech software. But that's not putting the brakes on plans to explore what programmers might do with data generated by the system by hosting a Citi Bike Civic Hack Night later this month. GO

Grassroots Republicans Are Not Waiting for the RNC To Revamp Their Digital Strategy

Several members of the Republican Party rank and file aren't waiting around for the GOP to reinvent itself on the technological front. They're organizing events themselves to explore what a tech-enabled GOP might look like for the 2014 cycle. GO

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New Russian Law Makes Publication of Information on Gay Rights Illegal

On June 11 the Russian parliament passed a bill against “homosexual propaganda” that effectively outlaws gay rights rallies and bans informational or pro-gay rights material from publication in the media or on the Internet. Violators of the law will risk heavy fines and censorship and, in the case of a media outlet, risk being shut down. It had near unanimous support, passing in a 436-to-0 vote, with only one abstention.

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Macedonia Draft Law to Regulate and Restrict the "Last Arena for Freedom of Speech"

The draft of a media regulation law in Macedonia has journalists and press freedom watchdogs up in arms. The proposed Law on Media and Audiovisual Media Services was written by the government behind closed doors and without input from the media or NGOs. It has been interpreted as a decisive move on the part of the government to limit speech online in a country where press freedoms are already limited. Until now, Internet-based news sites were not regulated like print media.

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Trying to Prosecute Online Piracy in Canada? Good Luck!

A private firm that is monitoring Canadians who download pirated content online has found itself at the center of a legal battle. GO

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