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In Virginia, City Council Debates to Include Questions Posed Online

BY Miranda Neubauer | Monday, May 21 2012

The Alexandria Democratic Party in Alexandria, Virginia has partnered with online civic engagement platform ACTion Alexandria to include questions solicited in an online forum in the final Democratic primary debate for a City Council election there on June 4, ahead of the June 12 election, according to a statement released by the group. ACTion Alexandria hopes to work with both parties during the general election.

Participants in the project can add questions to the forum, or vote on questions that have already been posed, although each user is only given three votes to distribute. Users are also encouraged to use their real names. Questions submitted so far hit on topics ranging from broadband access to a ban on food trucks in the city.

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For State Elections Officials, a Slow Move Online

BY Miranda Neubauer | Friday, February 17 2012

With a recent report from the Pew Center for the States revealing that one in eight voter registrations across the country is inaccurate, one could be forgiven for asking: If in 2012, Target can guess whether or not someone is about to have a baby with startling accuracy, why is it so hard for states to store correct voter information? Part of the answer is the way many states are still mired in paper records, where hand-entered voter rolls provide inefficiency and opportunity for error. But some elections officials have found a way out from under the reams of ink-stained sheets: Nine states have online voter registration already, and as many as 12 could have it by November, officials say. Election officials in states that already have these programs say that technically, none of this is hard to do — what it takes is political will. Read More

Canada To Reform Law Banning Election-Day Tweets

BY Miranda Neubauer | Friday, January 13 2012

A Canadian minister tweeted today that the Canadian government will be introducing legislation to lift a ban that penalized Canadians who reported on election results before all the polls had closed in the west of the country, the Globe and Mail reported. Read More

PdF France: What Kind of Day Has It Been

BY Antonella Napolitano | Thursday, December 8 2011

Were you in Paris last Tuesday? Our first PdF France was a great event! After the jump there's an account of the day with a little help from Storify... and a big one from all the people who were there Thanks to ... Read More

The Internet, the Ballot Box and the Russian Presidency

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, December 6 2011

In Moscow today, protesters took to the streets for a second day of demonstrations over Russian elections on Sunday that were marred by widespread reports of fraud and attempts to suppress election monitoring — ... Read More

An Ode to New York State's Voting Information Mess

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, December 1 2011

Ari Spool at Impose explains, without quite meaning to, why things like TurboVote exist: Oh, you don't live in East Amherst, NY? Then maybe you don't even HAVE to vote this year! Just kidding. There are things for ... Read More

Egyptians Look Online to Find and Share Elections Information

BY Miranda Neubauer | Tuesday, November 29 2011

Elections in Egypt Monday and Tuesday are, according to reports, turning out to be troubling in troubling times: Citizens are reporting lax electioneering rules and little accountability at polling places, in an ... Read More

VoterTide Shows Political Professionals, The Public Which Conversations And Stories "Have Legs" On Social Networks

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Wednesday, November 16 2011

In the last days stretching up to Massachusetts' special senate election in January 2010, some shadowy conservative group unleashed a negative "Twitter Bomb" messaging campaign against Democratic candidate Martha ... Read More

The Europe Roundup: The (Fake) Tweet That Changed the Election

BY Antonella Napolitano | Monday, November 7 2011

Ireland | The (Fake) Tweet That Changed the Election Last week, the people of Ireland elected Michael Higgins as president. Until a week before the elections, Higgins, a poet and former minister of arts, had been ... Read More

A Polish Twitter Election

BY Antonella Napolitano | Tuesday, September 27 2011

Polish parliamentary elections will take place next October 9th. Here's the account of what is happening online thanks to Michal Kolanko, a political reporter specializing in online politics in Poland. His personal ... Read More

News Briefs

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New Rice University Paper Chronicles Impact of the Internet On U.S. Foreign Policy

We all know that the Internet has transformed the way that the United States conducts diplomacy, and the way that it views national security, but where should we look to find evidence of this? This is the wide-ranging subject matter of a new paper published on Tuesday by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. The paper provides a round-up of some of the major turns of events between 2005 and 2011 in the realms of Internet governance, the development of online public diplomacy at the State Department, the evolution of the Internet-fueled Arab Spring, and the establishment of the shadowy U.S. Cyber Command in Fort Meade, Maryland, among other things. GO

Messin' with Lamar Smith, Revisited

Remember that grassroots fundraising campaign to put a "Don't Mess with the Internet" billboard in the home district of Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and sponsor of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act? All of the money required came in, and Fight for the Future, the advocacy group opposing more stringent copyright protections online, writes that the billboard went up. GO

Republican National Convention Organizers Sever Ties With Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions

After eight years producing online content for the Republican National Convention, GOP web consultant Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions is off of the project. "Campaign Solutions was retained to help develop our convention website and digital strategy, but they are no longer involved in convention planning," James Davis, the convention's communications director, told techPresident Tuesday. It's unclear what precipitated the of the relationship between the convention organizers and Campaign Solutions, which has been producing the online component of the event since 2004. But Donatelli's name surfaced in a controversial anti-Obama ad pitch sent to a Super PAC backed by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, which appeared in its entirety in the Times last week. Ricketts has since disavowed the proposal and Donatelli has denied any involvement. GO

PD+ This Thurs 1pm: Thriving Online With Howard Rheingold

I'm really looking forward to talking with author Howard Rheingold this Thursday on the next PD+ teleconference. His new book, Net Smart, is a concise and thoughtful guide to understanding and making the most of the hyper-networked, always-on, firehose of information and distraction that is the contemporary experience of anyone who uses ... GO

City of Joplin, Mo. Launches New Online Center Ahead of Tornado's Anniversary

The city of Joplin, Missouri launched its new web site over the week-end ahead of the May 22 anniversary of the massive tornado that devastated the city and killed 161 people. The new site enables Joplin citizens to sign up for emergency alerts via text message, e-mail and RSS. In addition to those alerts, individuals can also sign up for ... GO

In Virginia, City Council Debates to Include Questions Posed Online

The Alexandria Democratic Party in Alexandria, Virginia has partnered with online civic engagement platform ACTion Alexandria to include questions solicited in an online forum in the final Democratic primary debate for a City Council election there on June 4, ahead of the June 12 election, according to a statement released by the group. ACTion Alexandria hopes to work with both parties during the general election.

Participants in the project can add questions to the forum, or vote on questions that have already been posed, although each user is only given three votes to distribute. Users are also encouraged to use their real names. Questions submitted so far hit on topics ranging from broadband access to a ban on food trucks in the city.

GO

Motion Picture Association Names Marc Miller As Its New Online Copyright Cop

The Motion Picture Association of America on Monday named Marc Miller its vice president of online content protection. Miller comes to the MPAA from Nintendo of America, where he was the company's anti-piracy counsel for the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region. GO

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Google to Charlie Rangel: You Are Dead to Me.

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) might be facing particularly challenging reelection odds this year, at least acording to Google: based on its new Knowledge Graph interface, the search engine says that the very-much-alive Congressman died on November 20, 2004, as Colin Campbell first reported for Politicker via Azi Paybarah and Anthony Adragna. GO

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