Database Mining: The New Ward Heeler

The Republican Party has led in database development for the last 20 years, mostly with the work of former direct mailer Richard Viguerie, with his Moral Majority and Reagan contacts. I remember reading about it in industry journals at the time.

What Obama's campaign has done is made this kind of database scientific. There is no contact that is not followed up on through any of the following means: text message, email, phone, facebook, or twitter. This has been the Democrat's strategic advantage since he entered the race. The way his campaign has stayed on top of technology throughout has been impressive.

When everything is said and done after this campaign, everyone will point out the massive GOTV effort by the Democrats will have provided the edge. But this edge, of people walking their states, would not have been possible without the social networking and database contacts.

I probably received, in the last 2 months, 8 entreaties to phone bank or canvass in battleground states near me EVERY DAY. I had to look to do this in 2004.

Those Pesky Diebold Machines...

Recently, some stories have come up regarding the Diebold voting machines, this time favoring Senator Clinton against Senator Obama in the New Hampshire primary. While I believe there is a statistical rationale to being able to find wacky voting results (see Elections, U.S. Presidential, years 2000 and 2004), I did not believe that this was the case in New Hampshire. An excellent Salon Blog recently covered this topic before

I could get to it and quoted a just-completed study by two sociologists. They found that precincts that tended to use optical scan (Diebolds) were demographically different from those that did hand counts, and that was the reason for the differential between the candidates.

This is exactly what I suspected, and it only serves to prove the point that Americans have lost trust in one of our most fundamental systems--that which is supposed to ensure fair and honest elections. We need to be able to see the perils of an unbalanced voting system:

• Will our poorest precincts have lesser technology, more prone to error than the richer precincts around the country?


• Should there be a standard voting machine, so that no matter where any person might go, they'll be able to use the same machine that they're used to?


• Will standardization of back-up systems, to allow for a hand-count, for instance become the requirement of a voting machine?


• Should we work on an Internet-based voting system to maximize the number of people who vote?

Certainly that last one will be important in the future, but it will need to happen, provided the proper security is ensured. It might be at that point that we finally realize a true democracy in this country.

Welcome to My Blog!

And I'm sure I mean that literally, considering that the average readership of a blog is 1!

Despite that, I will try to post weekly, but if topics come up that are of interest and immediacy, I will at least attempt a quick note.

Who am I and why should you bother to read my blog? I can answer the first, and give inducements to the second, but ultimately you will decide whether your time is well spent here. Hopefully there will be lively discussions and a minimum of A**holes.

Answering the first question:
I am Dave Tainer, Director of Information Systems at GMHC, a New York City-based Non-Profit dedicated to the national fight against AIDS. In my role, I support the great staff at GMHC by providing them with the tools and the technology to do the best possible job. I offer strategic technological vision for the organization in its fight. Most importantly, I offer technological solutions to the myriad projects in organizing, testing, administering, counselling and record-keeping that are necessary on a day-day basis.

I've been involved in technology, directly or indirectly, since the dawn of the personal PC era, working for the government (Dept. of Energy, FEMA, both at Argonne National Labs), for-profit businesses, and teaching in the computer science department as adjunct faculty at DePaul University. Because I've worked in many different areas of IT (networking, programming, project management, strategy, vision, management, operational), I have a well-rounded view of all that technology can do, as well as what it can't.

I am also very interested in politics and can therefore speak of how technology is affecting our political culture and our political process. What has really sparked me to start this blog is the latest tech-related political flaps, namely, the following:

• Karl Rove's and the RNC's "lost" emails (hardware/software technology)
  
• the "1984" Hillary/Obama ad (viral video)
• The Giuliani campaign Website SQL flaw (Web/Internet)
• Voting Machines (hardware/software)
  

These all made me think that technology and politics are fast becoming like technology and business, heavily intertwined and inseparable. This is already ushering in a change in how campaigns are executed, financed, and viewed culturally. I will try to treat these topics in a journalistic fashion, that is, to tell the truth without distortion of my personal view of things. For the record, I'm socially liberal, but fiscally conservative, which, in these days, the loudmouths of the right refer to as "radicals". In any case, the blogosphere will act as my ethics board!

Let's hope this is the beginning of long friendship (just hope it's not with myself only)!