
Inside a Failed Silicon Valley Attempt to Reinvent Politics - jsoc815
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-20/inside-a-failed-silicon-valley-attempt-to-reinvent-politics
======
JackFr
There seems to be an assumption that low voter turnout is driven by something
other than the poor quality of the candidates offered and a rational
assessment of the value of voter time versus the marginal value of a single
vote.

It's not obvious to me that higher voter turnout leads to better governance.

~~~
drb91
> It's not obvious to me that higher voter turnout leads to better governance.

Higher than what?

Anyway, I think you’re projecting a lot of rationality where there’s just
apathy.

In any case, low voter turnout tends to harm the democrats, as demonstrated by
the ludicrous variety of ways various state republican parties have made
voting difficult for working people, poor people, non-english speakers,
felons, etc etc.

~~~
mc32
A few authoritarian regimes have been known have high voter turnout. Russia
recently had 67% turnout, Cuba 90%, Turkey had 85% though turkey is
compulsory. So, turnout is kind of an independent index.

Also, statistically speaking, if the turnout is “representative” then high or
low makes no difference with regard to what would occur with full turnout.

When people say we want high turnout, I think they really mean I want my side
to have full turnout and the opposition very low turnout —as this is the only
situation where this quest makes sense.

~~~
drb91
Yes, turnout by itself is not a good index. But that seems like a strawman.

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tammer
Take it from a political organizer (who has a day job in tech): there is in
fact a large opportunity for tech to play a role in affecting voter & civic
engagement. But knowing what those opportunities are isn’t going to come from
a tech vacuum. It will come from working closely with organizers and
recognizing their pain points, vs. treating voters like customers & assuming
there is a universal solution.

~~~
liveoneggs
a calendar event in the morning with a location and the entire ballot's
answers in a single place on your phone would help.

~~~
mbostleman
Exactly. Or maybe the day before, but the key being an extremely simple
solution to a core piece of the problem. Even if apathy were low and
engagement was high, it seems like a lot of effort for any given person to
know when and where they are up to bat for voting and what they're voting on.

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augustocallejas
In 2011-2012, I built my first iPhone app, called SuperVote [1], a social
ballot app that showed your Facebook friends' endorsements for upcoming
elections. I was motivated to build the app for state ballot measures more so
than political office elections, because in California you could have 10+
ballot measures to vote on, and I wanted a crowdsourced way to see where my
friend's sat on the different measures. I built the backend model to accept a
ZIP code and return back a custom ballot for each user, since your Facebook
friends may live in other states, so at most you would share the national
portion of the ballot.

I worked with a small core of friends to refine the app's features. I spent
much more time than I should have building the website using some software
called Freeway Express. I blogged regularly [2] and shared those links on
various state/city subreddits. In the end, I spent about $100 on Reddit ads to
get a total of 100 registered users and few endorsements. As not a designer, I
recognized the app was not flashy, so it may not have been appealing to
download. I also realize that the website doesn't do a good job in selling the
app, and that I focused more on the ideas rather than the app itself. I wonder
now how well a more polished version of this app would have played out in 2016
elections, although I recognize that the mix of politics and social media has
gone downhill since 2016.

[1] - [http://www.supervote.org](http://www.supervote.org) [2] -
[http://blog.supervote.org](http://blog.supervote.org)

~~~
mannanj
This looks interesting and something I have thought about for some time.

What code base did you develop the web app in? And do you have an android
version? I'd like if there were a slicker web app and possibly android app
that I could play with.

Maybe even I would help refactor this one day in the future.

~~~
mannanj
Oh I just saw you shut down the app.

What was the reasoning? Were you not getting enough use and participation? No
downloads? Did you fail to execute the concept in some way?

~~~
augustocallejas
> What code base did you develop the web app in?

The app itself was an iOS app written in Objective-C.

> And do you have an android version?

Unfortunately there wasn't. It probably would have been helpful to write it in
something like PhoneGap (now Apache Cordova) to increase engagement, but I was
using it partially as an exercise to learn Objective-C and iOS.

> What was the reasoning? Were you not getting enough use and participation?
> No downloads? Did you fail to execute the concept in some way?

At around 100 registered users, I felt it wasn't enough interest in the app to
keep going. Some of the feedback I got through the App Store included not
seeing all the available candidates (like lesser third party candidates) for a
given election. Since I was entering elections by hand and not using a third
party API to get the information, there was alway some information missing
from the lesser elections. Also, after the 2012 election was over, I didn't
see the purpose of maintaining an app that wouldn't be used for at least
another 2 years. Its something you need to be dedicated for in the long haul.

------
sulam
Mark Pincus decides game design is the unique value he can bring to politics —
and then promptly ships a clone of another game. Too real man, too real.

~~~
zentiggr
<The founder of Zynga> ... ships a clone of another game. Why expect anything
else?

~~~
sulam
Joke, meet the airspace over zentiggr’s head. ;)

~~~
zentiggr
Yep, just couldn't resist saying it I suppose. I'll try to be more original.

------
nostrademons
It seems ironic that the current press cycle is that tech both has too much
influence in politics (Russia, the alt-right, Infowars/QAnon conspiracy
theories, Google's supposed left-wing bias) and is totally ineffective at
politics (this article, various articles about how big tech is now under fire
from both left and right).

I think a more accurate narrative is that the Internet largely succeeded at
what it set out to do: democratize information flow, communication, and social
organization. And the consequence of that has been a shift in power from
groups that previously had hegemony to new upstarts that previously never had
a voice. If you aligned yourself with either one of the establishment parties
(as most people writing the traditional news do), then the situation today
_sucks_ , because your star is clearly on the decline. If, however, you found
that both parties of 1980s-America left you excluded and unrepresented, the
Internet has been a godsend for finding like-minded people. Unfortunately that
sometimes includes groups that we wish would _stay_ excluded, like white
supremacists.

Unlike areas like information, economic activity, or personal liberty, control
of existing institutions is zero-sum. If your party controls Congress, that
means the opposing party _doesn 't_ control it, and their agenda gets short
shrift. If a new group (or 20) arises to challenge your control, that's a
threat. That's the situation we're in now: there are dozens of different new
tribes organizing for political power, and all of them are a threat to
establishment institutions like existing political parties or the news media -
hence the sense that the sky is falling.

------
temp-dude-87844
This is pretty shallow for an "inside" look, rattling off one-liners about
various big money actors feverishly scrambling to hinder Trump or help
progressives or Democrats, and how none of them seemed to have a lasting
impact, but the bulk of the focus is on some plausibly-satire yet actually
submarine app for a comedian, presumably laced with the sort of absurdist
humour that people on the cusp of Millennials and Gen Z appreciate. In doing
so, it succeeds in being a more half-hearted attempt at journalism than the
political swaying of the businessmen it tried to cover.

The only true insight is the throwaway comment by the Virginia candidate for
Delegate, where he lost by a handful of votes, and laments the Democratic
party's increasingly obsolete and wasteful rules for advertising. Ironically,
that has little to do with Silicon Valley, but there's real meat there that's
worth exploring.

------
jdpedrie
In the wake of Obama's 2008 and 2012 elections, there was a ton of angst in
Republican circles as they woke up to the seemingly insurmountable gap between
the innovation of the Obama campaign and the pre-internet tactics of the GOP.
Added to the early rumblings against the perceived unfriendliness of the large
social networks, this resulted in a huge scattershot investment in a lot of
poorly conceived and equally poorly executed projects run by PACs and by the
party organization. Romney's election-day tech disasters come to mind as an
obvious example. Some sort of oral history from the people involved at the
time would be really fascinating.

Anyways, the shoe seems to be on the other foot today, as the Democrats appear
to have convinced themselves that they're behind the eight ball on tech
matters (a position I find silly, considering the massive advantage they have
in potential recruits and sympathetic developers).

Despite all the changes wrought by technology, politics is still played more
or less as it has always been. Charismatic politicians (Obama, Trump) carry
their party, hiding its weaknesses and exposing the weaknesses of their
opponents. "Social networking" is an extremely poor avenue for political
organizing (as distinguished perhaps from political rabble-rousing). Politics
is still a game of people and personality, and investments in internet
technology can only perhaps have an impact at the margins.

~~~
maxxxxx
Instead of tech maybe they should have a real message that appeals not only to
upper middle class or tech millionaires. The 2016 campaign showed to me how
out of touch the Democrats are with most of the country. Silicon Valley has
even less of an idea what's going on outside their bubble. As long as they
have such disdain for the working class they will keep losing. At least Obama
had a message. That's something I don't see today.

~~~
akhilcacharya
A “disdain for the working class”? What, pray tell, might that be?

If the Democrats can gain 20+ seats in congress without a “message” I’ll count
that as a success.

~~~
maxxxxx
A “disdain for the working class”? What, pray tell, might that be?

Calling people racist and bigots?

~~~
akhilcacharya
There are lots of working class people that aren’t racists and bigots (and in
terms of bigotry against people of color, many working class people _are_
people of color) and everyone accepts that there are many elites that are
racist and bigoted. I’m not sure where the “working class” comes into the
equation here.

~~~
maxxxxx
I know plenty of liberal white collar people who immediately call someone who
thinks about gun rights, has doubts about immigration or same sex marriage a
racist and bigot. Independently of the merit of these opinions writing these
people off is not a good idea.

~~~
akhilcacharya
Remember when Obama said that thing about clinging to guns and religion? He
ended up winning Pennsylvania by 10 points! Don’t pretend this is a new
phenomenon or that anybody actually cares that much about it.

~~~
LyndsySimon
> or that anybody actually cares that much about it.

I assure you, those of us for whom gun rights are a central issue - an issue
of basic civil rights - care.

As it is, I have no particular love for the Republican Party, but I simply
cannot see myself voting for a Democrat for state or national office given
their history of voting as a bloc against gun rights.

Objectively, I have no idea if gun control is a net positive for the Democrats
at a national level - but I'm confident that by branding themselves as the
party of gun control they are driving away a large number of people who would
otherwise be reachable.

~~~
akhilcacharya
I don't even disagree with you - but given that Obama won ~53% and 51% of the
vote (a higher vote share than anybody since HW Bush in '88) it's not as
important as some would think.

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claydavisss
The Democratic Party continues to fawn over tech barons despite the fact that
the general public has a negative view of the Silicon Valley elite.

edit: you would think 2016 would have taught the tech elite that they can't
just downvote their way to an outcome...this is so typical of HN

~~~
tomhoward
Sentiment towards "Silicon Valley elites" on HN tends to be highly critical
and negative.

Downvotes for comments like this are most likely due to lack of substance.

------
da02
Just out of curiosity, how did Trump win? (From what little I know, I've read
his team focused on getting electoral votes while Hillary's team focused on
some fancy data science strategy that ignored important districts. But,
everyone else keeps saying it was fake news and Russian covert ops.)

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Specifically, he won the election by edging a thin margin of electoral votes
in key swing states, while losing the popular vote by millions. How exactly
that came to be is stil a matter of debate.

~~~
claydavisss
There is no debate - we do not elect the President by a popular vote.

~~~
uxp100
Well, there is debate on the tactical decisions that lead to that. I've heard
that Clinton's campaign chose to make non-optimal decisions for winning the
presidency to try and help downticket races, because they assumed presidential
victory was assured. Whether that was the right strategy is up for debate,
kinda I guess, I mean, we know who won.

~~~
claydavisss
> Whether that was the right strategy is up for debate

Given that she lost, not really.

------
i_am_nomad
People elected Trump, and that is indeed a serious problem. But Silicon Valley
thinks the right way to solve that problem is not to address the root
grievances and problems of Trump’s supporters, but to outmaneuver them via
technology.

And of course, you have the profoundly amoral Mark Pincus and the hateful
Samantha Bee spearheading this.

------
unstuckdev
They say what the app does five paragraphs in:

>> _" The app, intended to be a kind of social network to spark political
activity,"_

Most of the big change in politics in the last decade has come from apps that
make it easier to do good old-fashioned grassroots organizing. It's why the
DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) is making waves now. They usually just
use Twitter for the social network part.

The rest of the article talks about other attempts at apps for political
organizing, and the politics of political apps. Not a bad read if you're into
the subject, but I expected a look at the technical failure it opens with
given the title.

