July 22nd, 2008 Brian Herzog
I noticed this interesting juxtaposition of the difference in the way the Democratic and Republican parties are approaching technology at campaign events.
The Arizona Star reported that the GOP wanted to prevent any attendees of a Tucson fundraiser from recording the event, out of fear of what might show up on YouTube. Bush himself asked the attendees to turn off all recording devices, and was quoted as saying
I don’t know a lot about technology…but I do know about YouTube.
On the other hand, an email from the Obama campaign goes in the exact opposite direction. The email mentioned an upcoming rally in Massachusetts on August 4th (Obama’s birthday, incidentally), and read in part:
…remember to bring your camera and snap a few photos! You can share them with us at eventsforobama@gmail.com. We’ll start posting photos soon!
Not that there is any one right way to approach technology, but I did find this contrast telling. The Bush Administration has a long reputation of trying to suppress and control information and keep things behind closed doors, whereas the Obama campaign has embraced modern technology and has put effort into learning it to use it to their advantage.
Politics is politics, but I am all for being encouraged to participate. Besides, I like misunderstanding or fear.
Tags: democratic, democrats, political, political parties, politics, republican, republicans, social networking, Technology, web 2.0, web2.0, youtube See Also
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May 20th, 2008 Brian Herzog
I thought this was an interesting approach to organizing political information: the Democratic National Committee has created “McCainpedia.”
McCainpedia is a wiki intended to serve as the hub for opposition research for the upcoming presidential race. It’s interesting because it is a example of a large and important organization using a wiki to communicate with (not to, but with) its members.
As far as the world of politics goes, it seems like a pretty novel idea to make information public like this. But I like it. I just finished reading Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, which talks a lot about how making things public actually makes them more accurate and more secure.
In the book, the topic is computer encryption. The reasoning is that if the encryption technology is made public, much smarter people than its creators will try to break it - if no one can break it, then you know it’s secure. But if you keep it secret, you’ll never know about its vulnerabilities until it’s too late.
I like that a political party is bringing information to the public in an easy-to-use format, instead of doing all their research and strategizing in the proverbial smoke-filled, locked-door war room. It would be even better if the information wasn’t just anti-McCain, but compared his positions to the democratic nominee.
I’m sure both republicans and democrats will be scrutinizing the information published here, and reporting any errors or omissions. This will lead to better information, which leads to a more informed public.
And even though the information is obviously biased, I still would consider this a trustworthy source. You always need to take the source and its slant into account when using information, but because the DNC is putting its name on this and taking responsibility for it, I would trust them to be accurate.
Via Huffington Post, via Politico.com
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January 26th, 2008 Brian Herzog
A patron came up to the desk and said:
I keep hearing on the news about other states’ primaries and caucuses. I know it’s for the President, but what’s the big deal? We don’t vote until November, right? What’s the difference between a caucus and a primary? What happens if you don’t win them? Does Massachusetts have one? And I keep hearing good and bad things about all the candidates - who is winning?
I love easy questions like this.
I knew the Massachusetts primary is coming up, so the first thing I wanted to do is search the state’s website for information on that. While doing that, I tried to give a brief description of the whole primary/caucus system: candidates win delegates in each state, who then cast votes in the party conventions to decide who actually runs for President…
By this time I had found a few Massachusetts resources:
- MA Elections Division, which listed the primary’s date (Feb. 5th), as well as lots of information on both state- and national-level elections
- The Voting Process website, which explained how to register, how to apply for an absentee ballot, what do to and where to go on election day, and more
At this point, the patron confessed that she was far more interested in who was winning than in how the process itself worked. A website I found a few weeks ago is perfect to answer this: CNN Election Center 2008.
I like this website for the same reason I don’t like USAToday - it breaks everything down into easy to understand chunks, and does so with lots of colors and graphs. It lists who has won each primary/caucus so far, and how many delegates each candidate has earned.
It also explains the major issues and where each candidate stands, has an easy-to-use calendar for upcoming primaries and caucuses, shows which candidates have dropped out, how much money each candidate has raised and spent, and more.
All in all, it seems like a fairly complete election coverage source. And it satisfied the patron (actually, it outright delighted her to see Ron Paul has won more delegates than Rudy Giuliani even though Giuliani has spent $30.6 million to Paul’s $2.8 million). She wrote down the url and promised to read more about the issues before Feb. 5th.
I was curious, though - even though I think CNN is a reliable source, I also wanted to see what other election coverage and resources were available. I spent some time searching, and here’s what I came up with, broken down by type:
Election News Coverage:
Campaign Finances:
Election/Voting Resources:
Political Parties and National Conventions:
I didn’t bother linking directly to each candidates’ website, because many of the sites above do that. In fact, since they’re all reporting on the same thing, most of the information on these sites is duplicated. I guess the point is to pick at least one resource you trust and stay informed.
2008, campaign, candidates, election, elections, libraries, library, politics, president, presidential, public, question, reference, reference question
Tags: 2008, campaign, candidates, election, elections, libraries, Library, politics, president, presidential, public, question, reference, Reference Question See Also
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