Hope is Here

Images from Flickr from today’s Inauguration. A new day at last!

Paul Hurst's Word Cloud of the Inaugural Address

Is Tech Fluency a Qualification for President?

I was talking to Micah Sifry, the braintrust and life force behind Personal Democracy Forum, about the new Obama ad focused on McCain’s Internet ignorance.  The question I have is whether that is so important as to warrant it’s own TV ad called “Still”.  The point of the ad is that McCain is “out of touch” but really it’s about calling McCain old.   So, is Internet illiteracy akin to future presidential leadership.?  I guess it depends on who the campaign is trying to reach.  Maybe for 15-29 year old Millennials it is.  Seems to me that the constant McCain flip flops on the economy, taxes, offshore drilling, Christian extremists might be be better issues to focus on.

Summit Highlight: Columbia Students

The Presidential Summit at the inaugural ServiceNation event at Columbia University tonight was fascinating to watch.  But it wasn’t so much the heavyweight presidential contenders that were mesmerizing, rather the thousands and thousands of young people who came to Columbia and sat on the lawn and the steps of Low Memorial Library, on the walls and banisters and sidewalks and if the security guards had let them they would have hung out of the windows to watch an enormous outdoor video screen of the event happening about one hundred yards away indoors.

I have been to a Super Bowl, and even to one or two operas.  I was at Invesco Field in Denver when Senator Obama accepted the Democratic nomination. Yet, I have never seen a large audience as quiet, rapt and intense as the young people on the lawn.  In unison they sat to watch the candidates interviewed and then stood to stretch during commercial breaks.  They were largely polite during McCain’s segment – although derisive hoots and some boos were heard when he emphatically stated that ROTC should be allowed on campus.

Obama was, of course, on his home turf at his alma mater with his most vocal and passionate supporters in attendance; well-educated, young people.  A mighty roar did go up when Obama came to the stage.  And yet, the rapt audience quickly quieted down and sat so as not to block the view of the person(s) behind them.  There was no multi-tasking going on.  Cell phones were tucked away accept for an occasional call to find a buddy, laptops were in dorm rooms or backpacks. Honestly, you could have heard an ear bud drop.

As I wrote in Social Citizens, a paper commissioned by The Case Foundation, I find the enthusiasm for social change and facility with technology of Millennials awe-inspiring.   They are passionate about this election; but polite about other people’s choices, which was amazing to see on a campus that was literally torn apart exactly forty years earlier during another national election.

And now, just a few observations on the actual presentations:

*  Contrary to Judy Wodruff’s introductory statement that Time Magazine “launched the national service movement” last year, the national service movement has been growing in size an stature for several decades.  In fact it has grown in size as quickly as computer chips have decreased in size.  As a participant in the development of the national service field during the 1990s, I am astonished at the maturation of the field.  National service is not an add-on program or an afterthought for politicians trying to appeal to young people.  As we hear during the introductory remarks, volunteerism and service are embraced by corporations like Target that gives 5% of its revenue and millions of hours of voluntary service a year by employees, government at all levels, young people in school and immediately out of it, and twenty million AARP members a year.  Volunteerism has always been a fundamental part of American culture; it is now a central part of our economy as well.

*  Observers of events like this, meaning people like me who are housed in rooms filled with sister bloggers, are aglow with a potpourri of social media gadgets – we are writers, photographers, videographers, bloggers, and, using Twitter, microbloggers.  That’s a lot of wires to cross and flash drives to juggle.  My colleague Julia Rocchi of The Case Foundation Twittered that she was watching my laptop screen as I was Twittering making it macro-micro blogging experience!   I won’t attempt to figure out what blogging now about our macro-micro blogging experience might mean!

* There is an intersection of politics and volunteerism that is happening that I don’t quite understand right now.  Not nonprofit organizations interest in shaping public policy, that’s been going on for a long time; think about the way education reform groups and health care organizations have been educating members and constituents and lobbying Congress for years.  I mean that volunteerism and community service have become important elements in political campaigns and that means something, I’m just not sure what yet.  If anyone has any ideas, feel free to let me know, otherwise, I’ll sleep on it.

Give to the Red Cross, Really?

All eyes were on the Gulf Coast yesterday hoping and praying for Hurricane Gustav to lose steam, and thankfully, particularly for the citizens of New Orleans, it did.  And politicians of all stripes were smart enough to take a break from campaigning in light of the potential catastrophic repeat of Katrina.  Midday I received the email I knew from news reports was coming from the Obama campaign.  In essence it said, “Let’s all be Americans today and support the people of the Gulf.”  Fine, this is part of the fabric of the American culture to pitch in and provide dollars and time to causes, particularly when natural disasters strike.  What did surprise me was the cause of choice:  The Red Cross?

Really, The Red Cross?  The organization that is cited again and again by the federal government for mismanagement and is currently a financial mess (see here)?  The group that has had more CEOs than the Redskins have had coaches in this new century (see here).  Supporting the Red Cross is like supporting General Motors – they’re both large, unwieldy bureaucracies that are way past their prime and need to get their acts together and stop depending on the Feds to do it for them.

For a campaign that prides itself on being hip and savvy, this was a terrible choice.  Why not the great organizations that have done a heroic job since Katrina such as the Foundation for the Mid South which has done a heroic job of raising and dispersing money for direct support of Katrina victims?  An even bolder choice would have been the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Fund that provides funds for direct services but also advocates for more government support for housing and disaster relief for low-income residents.

Voter Story in Pennsylvania

There will be a lot going on in Pennsylvania tomorrow with the death match between Obama and Clinton coming down to the wire. A huge turnout and lots of new voters are expected which is always worrisome in large states like PA with lots of different municipalities (the Pittsburgh area has the largest number of unique municipalities in one county, Alleghany, in the country) all with their own machinery and rules. There will be a lot of commentary on who voted for whom, but there is another, smaller story worth watching, and that is what happens to the machinery tomorrow.

The folks at Why Tuesday have been provided a heads up that several Pennsylvania counties are using Sequoia Voting Systems electronic voting machine. These are the same machines that failed dramatically in the New Jersey primary on Super Tuesday in February. The vulnerabilities of these machines have been well publicized by computer science professors Ed Felton and Andrew Appel at Princeton. Appel bought five used Sequoia machines last year at a government auction to explore their guts. Wired Magazine has an account of what Appel learned once he had thoroughly explored the Sequoia machines:

Appel says he opened the machines with a key that came with them, and was able to easily access the machines’ motherboards and memory chips to swap them out. But even without the key, a student of his was able to pick the lock in seven seconds. He says that even seals wouldn’t thwart a hacker because they’re easily counterfeited, and many counties fail to use and track them properly — as evidenced by recent reports out of Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

But none of this is really news, is it? We’ve come to expect human error coupled with crummy machines on Election Day. But, here’s the real story for tomorrow, Voter Story.

I’ve been watching voter hotline efforts mature and scale over the past few years. The idea behind Voter Story is that rather than rely on news reports or even blogs about what’s happening on Election Day at the polls, voters can call comment using a form on Voter Story (on its website or through its widgets that are freely distributed). Partners groups working to public Voter Story include VoterAction, Committee of Seventy, NAACP Voter Fund and the National Lawyers Committee for Election Protection.

Rob Stuart, the brains behind Voter Story, also told me that he is working with the League of Women Voters of PA to get the word out about Voter Story.

Voter Story is important on two levels. Local voter assistance organizations will be using the data in real time to pinpoint problems across the state and make state officials aware of them as well as help individuals access the ballot. After the election, geeks like me will be able to use the data to get a broader, data-based picture of what the problems areas were across the state.

We can hope that tomorrow’s vote runs smoothly across Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, there are systemic reasons why that won’t happen. Let’s read about the story as it unfolds in real time at Voter Story.