Daily Digest: When it Comes to Election Prediction, Are the Kids All Right?

The Web on the Candidates

• The Children are Our Future. And Election Oracles: If you were born before, oh, 1975, you might not be familiar with Channel One. Born after, and you probably know it's an in-class news and advertising network beamed out to millions of American school kids. For the fourth time, the network is holding a mock online election that asks students for their presidential picks, a project called One Vote. Results will be released next Wednesday, October 29th. Why might you particularly care? Well, because, according to the network, the contest has correctly predicted the presidential winner of the three closely-contested elections of 1992, 2000, and 2004. If you can't wait until next week, check out the results of Nickelodeon's "Kids Pick the President" poll. With more than two million votes counted, the winner is Obama -- and they've been right four out of the last five races. #

• "Deceptive Practices 2.0": The Internet might just be used for dirty election tricks this cycle, from denial-of-service attacks on candidates' websites to spoof emails purported to be from election officials. That's according to a hefty new report (pdf) from a coalition that includes the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Century Foundation, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Common Cause. Wired's Sarah Lai Stirland has the details. If you happen to spot online election deception, go ahead and report it to Common Cause. And remember, be ever vigilant in double-checking checking URLS and email headers, and help your friends do the same! #

The Candidates on the Web

• Average Joe's 15 Days of Fame?: The McCain campaign has launched an "I'm Joe the Plumber" video contest, the winner of which will, the campaign says, be used in a TV ad. "Be creative!," team McCain urges, asking participants to answer the question "how would Barack Obama's plan to "spread the wealth around" hurt you?" But the videos aren't displayed on YouTube or voted on on JohnMcCain.com -- they're sent directly into the campaign, which might cut down on the chance that wisenheimers will create video spoofs. Though that's not stopping some folks. Jack & Jill Politics' Baratunde Thurston, whose video submission is the first Google search result for "Joe the Plumber" video contest, cleverly uses the contest as a chance to redirect people to The Obama campaign's Tax Calculator. #

• Searching for Obama's Small Donors: Obama's $150 million September haul might be sparking much interest and analysis, but the letter of campaign finance law means that the campaign isn't compelled by any legal authority to disclose the many contributions falling under the $200 mark. As Thomas Pierce notes on NPR's Vox Politics blog, the Republican National Committee is calling on Obama to go beyond the law and disclose small donors. For it's part, the RNC says its hard at work on a database of small donors to the GOP that will be updated within a day that the dollars are chipped into the party's kitty. #

• Counting Chickens CTOs: BusinessWeek's Tom Lowry stops to consider who might fill the oft-discussed role of Chief Technology Officer in an Obama administration, dropping names like Vint Cerf (Google), Steve Ballmer (Microsoft), and Jeff Bezos (Amazon). Tom also explores who might ascend to the top of the FCC chair, which, if old-school Washington isn't completely upended, will likely be a more powerful post in the near term. And in a blog post, Robert Scoble points to a video conversation with Stanford's Larry Lessig on what a cabinet-level CTO job would entail. Larry, you'll note, says he's not the right person for the post, but stops well short of a Shermanesque statement. (Be sure to check out the comments on the post, for a healthy discussion about the chief technologist role and candidates.) Perhaps another contender? Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who recently hopped on the campaign trail on Obama's behalf. #

• A Look Behind the Blue Curtain: Blue State Digital's CTO and co-founder Jascha Franklin-Hodge recently sat down for a video interview with O'Reilly Radar's Joshua-Michele Ross. If you can get past the fact that the interview was recorded in the back of a car bumping down a New York City street, it offers up some insight into how the Obama web world works. It provides a solid overall look at how BSD does its thing. Other discussion topic highlights include the idea Obama's presidential run is actually an amalgam of "little campaigns" and the possibility of porting the Obama '08 organizing model to the heady task of governing. #

TechCongress and Beyond

• Shining Some Sunlight on the Senate Side: Inspired by the successes of its Open House Project, the Sunlight Foundation has just launched an Open Senate Project to focus attention on the other side of Capitol Hill. Now, when it comes to tech and transparency, the Senate is a bit more of the moment and, how should we say, functional than the gang of 435 on the other side of the Hill. That said, there's still work to be done. Like OHP, OSP is a bipartisan effort, headed up by Sunlight's John Wonderlich, GovTrack's Josh Tauberer, and the Next Right's Jon Henke. If you want to help, who might start by digging into the standing rules of the Senate that OSP has posted. (A note for my geek homies: They're making use of the rather neat Issu document display tool, which might be of interest if you or your organization works with online docs.) #

In Case You Missed It...

Alan Rosenblatt was surprised recently to find that he himself was the presidential favorite of voters in AARP's latest video. You might have seen other "you're the candidate" stuff before, but the AARP's is particularly well done and the message of grassroots change is reinforced by the neat special effects. But umm, seriously -- how'd they get that little boy to scrawl my name in crayon?

Micah Sifry takes some pokes at Google's Eric Schmidt's argument, amplified by Arianna Huffington, that thanks to the Internet we're witnessing "the end of Rovian politics." While saying that we're indeed seeing "a networked public sphere that continuously scours the world for interesting information and collectively bubbles the most important stuff to greater view," Micah questions whether the Internet yet deserves its reputation as slayer of all things untrue.

Also from Micah -- a gift of "Rebooting America" to a disenchanted hedge fund manager who now says "the system is clearly broken."

And Nancy Scola has an update on the Twitter vote report project which includes a rundown of the remarkable collection of partner organizations now assembled and a look at what some ingenious developers are whipping up.