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Daily Digest: Wikiing for a "Fair Fight"

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, September 19 2008

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.

News Briefs

RSS Feed yesterday >

This Isn't What Political Air Time Usually Means

MoveOn.org is asking supporters for $150,000 in donations to fly a plane above high-dollar fundraisers for Mitt Romney with "a message that reminds voters how he represents his corporate and 1% donors." MoveOn previously hired a plane to fly over Romney's Liberty University graduation speech with the message "GOP = HIGHER SCHOOL DEBT." GO

There's a New $200 Million Fund for Super-High-Speed Broadband Projects

An initiative to build and test gigabit-speed broadband networks is set to fund up to six next-generation Internet access projects across the country, fueled by a new $200 million broadband development funding program, Gigabit Squared and Gig.U announced this morning. GO

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.

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