The Web on the Candidates

• A Collaborative Attempt to Protect the Vote: Comedian, activist, Obama supporter, and Jack & Jill Politics blogger Baratunde Thurston has launched The Voter Suppression Wiki. The freely-editable online hub aims to coordinate information and activism around any foul play and/or mess ups that might make election '08 less than on the level. Of note: Baratunde reports that the wiki is drawing on the lessons learned from the innovative Get FISA Right effort that we've often covered on techPres in the past. No matter where you stand on the subject of the wiki, you may well appreciate Get FISA's Jon Pincus's insightful analysis of how the rather vanilla technology can be used to rebalance the "information asymmetry" often at play in politics. #

• Pulling Back the Curtain on Hidden Cash: As the election heats up, we're seeing more ads in the vein of "Candidate Smith steals the newspaper from outside hotel rooms. Can he really be trusted not to steal your child's future? Paid for by Concerned Hotel Patrons for the Truth." When you want to know which outside group is really behind those ads, here's one place to turn. NPR's Secret Money project, launched last month, has such a concise and clear self-description that I'm just going to crib it: "Political money can be sorted into three piles -- the candidates' cash, the parties' and everything else. This 'everything else' money is what we're looking at." Yesterday, for example, the Secret Money blog had the fascinating back story behind an SCHIP commercial from the fuzzily named "America's Agenda: Health Care for Kids" now running in targeted markets across the U.S. Secret Money would also love to hear from you about suspicious or confusing outside-party ads, fliers, and phone calls coming your way. #

The Candidates on the Web

• The More Debates Change, The More They...: We're thinking of renaming this section "The Candidates Not on the Web" -- at least where it comes to the upcoming presidential debates. Wired's Sarah Lai Stirland reports that the debates this year are largely closed-off broadcast affairs. The batch of four head-to-heads between Barack Obama and John McCain will feature none of the participatory elements of the primaries. Those intra-party matchups saw YouTube video questions and MySpace-powered interactivity; the general election's format would be instantly familiar to Dick Nixon and Jack Kennedy. Relatedly, Personal Democracy Forum has, as Sarah reports, joined a number of other democracy groups in pushing for the Commission on Presidential Debates make transparent its agreement with the McCain and Obama campaigns. #

TechCongress and Beyond

• Introducing Pork 2.0: Republican Congressman Jeff Flake (AZ) has just launched the Twitter-powered Pork Parade. In concept, it's rather clever. Tweets hashtagged with #pork pop up in a live feed on the site, and the top Pork Busters, i.e. Twitterers with the most thus tagged posts, are honored on a leaderboard. Flake has made a name for himself with his colorful Capitol Hill challenges on what he views as wasteful spending. And Pork Parade is a cute digital upgrade to what he's been doing on the floor of the House for years. But once the novelty of a Twitter-fueled site wears off, we wonder where the concept evolves for Flake. #

In Case You Missed It...

From the for-profit Catalist to the RNC's VoterVault to the DNC's VoteBuilder, Nancy Scola looks at some of the voter databases powering the '08 race.