

What we don't know about elections - andymboyle
http://blog.thescoop.org/archives/2011/10/17/what-we-dont-know-about-elections/

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iandanforth
I initially read the headline as "What we don't know about electrons."

Could someone please post that article? It sounds far more interesting!

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te_platt
Try [http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/getdoc/slac-
pub-8010.p...](http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/getdoc/slac-pub-8010.pdf)
. Page 9 has some interesting questions. The whole article is pretty good too.

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d2vid
I'd be much more interested in tools that explain each candidates's stance and
previous actions on the issues I care about that the media won't cover, such
as intellectual property, than in more horse race coverage. The horse race has
been flogged to death.

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patio11
I recommend being a Judge of the Election at least once. It requires generally
a half-day of orientation and a day of work, and you get paid to do it. (Your
mission, should you choose to accept it: work for a day as a temporary non-
partisan governmental employee, making sure that a bunch of non-expert voters
manage to successfully navigate democracy, without influencing their votes or
allowing anyone to corrupt the process.)

After you see how the sausage is made you'll be _amazed_ that the republic
still endures.

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VladRussian
reminded me - in my pre-school childhood i once tagged along with my father as
he was a Judge of the Election for an elections in our district.

>making sure that a bunch of non-expert voters manage to successfully navigate
democracy,

the "democracy" was easy to navigate - passport (obviously) to confirm the
name/address, this is your ballot (with one candidate, obviously, unanimously
supported by the Party and the people), mark here, this is the comments
section to let the candidate know your wishes (graphologists would later take
care of anybody "anonymously" leaving any comments other than congratulations
or specific requests to repair a specific sewer system)

>without influencing their votes or allowing anyone to corrupt the process.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1341504/pdf/bmjc...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1341504/pdf/bmjcred00251-0003.pdf)

"It is considered by some governments that if a person does not agree with the
views of the state, his sanity must be called into question. Extensive
documentation exists on the misuse of psychiatry and psychiatric drugs in the
Soviet Union."

>After you see how the sausage is made you'll be amazed that the republic
still endures.

All the election officials were given chance to buy a nice high quality
sausage ("kolbasa") at official prices. It was the first time i tasted such a
nice one ("polukopchenaya") and still remember its taste :)

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Tangurena
> _It’s not that political journalism has strayed from its roots, or stopped
> covering important elements of a modern campaign. It’s that the elements of
> a modern campaign have changed, and as journalists, we have not kept pace._

As someone who actually ran for a small state-level elected office in 2008, I
can flat out state that journalists _have_ strayed far far away from anything
resembling journalism.

> _I don’t believe that we as journalists devote enough attention to
> understanding those changes._

In Denver, there was ONE journalist whose "beat" covered our race. And the
subject matter that the agency we were running for was a small part of what
this one person's reporting covered. This guy was older than I am, and I'm old
enough to be making "catch up" contributions to my IRA and 401k.

Downsizing and mergers in the newspaper industry has resulted in single
reporters covering what used to be covered by a handful of reporters 2 decades
ago. It isn't new technology that is enabling more productivity, it is the
endless downsizing to boost share prices that has gutted and rendered news
agencies useless and unfit for duty.

In 2008, when I ran for that office, there were 2 daily newspapers. In early
2009, one of them closed their doors.

> _Elections will become even bigger surprises to us, and then how long will
> it be before readers start to ask whether we actually know the people and
> places we cover?_

My recommendation to prove to yourself just how out of date and out of touch
with modern technology that journalists are, is to run for elected office
yourself. Many elected positions are part time (school boards, for example) so
you won't have to give up your day job to experience it. Despite coming in
dead last, and the winner spending 200x as much as I did, it was a blast.

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Lukeas14
As a web geek who loves politics, I believe the problem with campaign coverage
lies much deeper. Even with data scientists on hand to analyze the same data
sets the campaigns have access to I could only imagine the results would be
presented in an extremely dumbed down fashion and angled to reflect each media
outlet's bias. It's not a matter of ability, as they all do a decent job
presenting exit poll data post election, it's that CNN knows they will achieve
higher ratings showing hologram gimmicks than in depth charts and graphs.

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civilian
"But the nature of media and technology has brought extensive changes to the
electoral system, and I don’t believe that we as journalists devote enough
attention to understanding those changes."

So much truth. The statement "journalists don't devote enough attention to
understanding" is also pretty defensible.

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veyron
Where's the obama github?

tweet: <http://twitter.com/#!/derekwillis/status/126084472666984448>

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andymboyle
Perhaps it's this: <https://github.com/ofa>

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spaznode
It's true, and we could always use more development help if you're in dc
@catalist.us among others..

