Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Links Government Politics

Monitoring the U.S. Elections Online? 535

Posted by Cliff from the tallying-up-those-electoral-votes dept.
shahman wonders: "I'll be on the road all day this election day, so the only access I'll have is through my PDA/Phone. I was wondering if any Slashdot readers know of WAP-enabled services or low-bandwidth sites that are providing (semi) real-time election coverage?" Nobbin has a similar, but less bandwidth-restrictive question: "I was wondering where I could find live results for the coming U.S. election, online. I live in Australia so I can't get them through watching CNN and so forth. I'm looking for something similar to the Austalian Electoral Commission's virtual tally room. So far, Google hasn't turned up much."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Monitoring the U.S. Elections Online? More

Monitoring the U.S. Elections Online?

Comments Filter:

  • try CNN (Score:5, Informative)

    by Frisky070802 ( 591229 ) * on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:39PM (#10696340) Journal
    CNN has a tally room [cnn.com], which I think is what Nobbin is getting at.

    • Re:try CNN (Score:3, Informative)

      by Tony Hoyle ( 11698 )
      Try
      http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/result s/pre sident/

      The other link needs registration.

    • better yet, (Score:5, Insightful)

      by twitter ( 104583 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @02:02AM (#10697304) Homepage Journal
      try http://www.dibold.com/super/secret/backdoor/videop oker/election/666/

      The user is "admin" and the password is "password". Just set the winner by state and percentage. There are a few bugs that make things unpredictable, however. Now that you know, I'm going to have to kill you.

      I only wish that I was joking. Try this [blackboxvoting.org] on for size:

      The central servers are installed on unpatched, open Windows computers and use RAS (Remote Access Server) to connect to the voting machines through telephone lines. Since RAS is not adequately protected, anyone in the world, even terrorists, who can figure out the server's phone number can change vote totals without being detected by observers. The passwords in many locations are easily guessed, and the access phone numbers can be learned through social engineering or war dialing.

      Unpatched Winblows, RAS, modems? Un-#######-believable!

      • Re:better yet, (Score:5, Insightful)

        by digitaltraveller ( 167469 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @03:00AM (#10697637) Homepage
        Why is this comment moderated as funny? It is child's play to 0wn an unpatched windows box and RAS itself has several known vulnerabilities.

        Pray that your side has better hackers.

        Frankly, after 2000 the mere existence of the insecure electronic voting issue is a disgrace.

        "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."
        --Thomas Jefferson

    • Re:try CNN (Score:5, Funny)

      by ari_j ( 90255 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @02:27AM (#10697454)
      Screw CNN, The Onion [theonion.com] has a complete map [theonion.com] already.

    • As a European I support Bush and his ideology (Score:5, Funny)

      by Steeltoe ( 98226 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @05:53AM (#10698317) Homepage
      As a European, I'm thoroughly ashamed how many would vote for Kerry when clearly Bush is your only way to go. He has great vision, speech and plans for the future. What other candidate has great plans for going to mars? The US patriotism must never be allowed to die, because without it, where would the world be?

      Kerry is just a multibillionaire. He's too intelligent. He speaks too coherently, consider the issues in detail, thus thinks TOO much (flip, flop). How can you trust Kerry with anything? Better to vote Independent than to vote Kerry.

      As a European, it is incomprehensible to me that anybody could vote for somebody like Kerry. Bush is clearly the one you must vote for. So I urge every patriot US consumer to vote for Bush. You have to! Somebody must be left to save your Country!? I am seriously concerned about you.

      You have to vote for Bush, as a European I demand it. Kerry can't be allowed to win any election, neither here or in the US.

      I say Bush is your only choice. Either you're with me on this, or you're against me. There's no middle ground for you.

      Either you have to vote for Bush, or you have to vote Independent. It's better for you to vote independent or don't vote at all, than to vote on Kerry, so you won't steal any votes from Bush. Kerry is absolutely a no-no for you. I know what's best for you, because God speaks through me.

      For more information, here is the grand future plans for the US [newamericancentury.org]. Notice the names at the bottom, do you find Kerry there? NO. He's a wuss. He doesn't value our fundamental principles.

  • Wikipedia has results & an index (Score:5, Informative)

    by ke4roh ( 590577 ) * <(jimes) (at) (hiwaay.net)> on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:39PM (#10696345) Homepage Journal
    Wikipedia's article U.S. presidential election, 2004 [wikipedia.org] answers the higher bandwidth question quite thoroughly - with results (updated frequently [wikipedia.org]) and links to a host of sites that will report the results as they come in. Don't expect much before 23:00 GMT since that's when the first of the polls close.

  • Try (Score:3, Informative)

    by awaspaas ( 663879 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:40PM (#10696350)
    http://www.pollstats.com

  • Does this exist? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by l810c ( 551591 ) * on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:40PM (#10696352)
    Where can find detailed information about all candidates down to the county level? Positions on issues, voting record, etc. would be great. I know the positions of all of the National and most of the State candidates. I do not have a party affiliation and usually vote for the candidate whose platform most closely resembles mine.

    I live outside Atlanta. The Atlanta Paper [ajc.com](Get login from bugmenot.com) has Great information about all of the candidates in the 'Metro' Atlanta area. I'm 2 houses away from that area in Newton County, GA. My cable providor is from an adjacent county, so I haven't been able to see any ads about the ones in my county. The local paper [newtoncitizen.net] is useless.

  • a few ideas (Score:5, Informative)

    by squarefish ( 561836 ) * on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:40PM (#10696354)
    air america radio [airamericaradio.com] will have special coverage and with their 30-something stations and the live stream, you should be able to get some good out of them.

    also, http://www.electoral-vote.com/ [electoral-vote.com] is going to have ongoing coverage all night also.

    of course all the usual suspects like cnn [cnn.com] and the other general papers and new sources should have pretty up to date info as well.

  • Wait for Diebold to tell you. (Score:4, Funny)

    by jthayden ( 811997 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:40PM (#10696356)
    Don't worry, Diebold has already decided who won, they'll let you know.

  • Nothing to see here. Move along... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by general_re ( 8883 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:42PM (#10696370) Homepage
    Seriously, nobody's going to be doing any exit-poll results until the polls start closing, which won't be till around 7 pm in the East at the earliest. All you'll get is the usual "we're standing outside a polling place in Bumfuck, Iowa, and the mood of the people is restive/festive/destructive/cheerful/whatever" during the day, so drive carefully, keep your eyes on the road, your hands on the wheel, and watch the news when you get home in the evening....
    • Matt Drudge [drudgereport.com] said he will run exit-polilng data through the day. He did during the 2002 election. The major networks agreed to stop doing this after the 2000 problems.
      • The networks never broadcasted exit polling data before the polls in any given area were closed... that started well before the 2000 debacle.
      • Drudge is an ass - not that he listens to anyone other than his own giant ego, but whatever. I doubt Drudge has the resources to commission a real nationwide exit poll for himself, so if he does, it'll be because someone at one of the networks is leaking it to him.

      • Re:Nothing to see here. Move along... (Score:5, Informative)

        by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75@NOspAm.yahoo.com> on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @12:25AM (#10696709)
        Matt Drudge said he will run exit-polilng data through the day. He did during the 2002 election. The major networks agreed to stop doing this after the 2000 problems.

        Matt Drudge is not running any exit polling. Matt Drudge is one guy; he doesn't have the power to do anything at all himself, and he has no organization. He's one guy (actually with another guy who helps him out) with a web site. That's it.

        Drudge relies on polling data that he "obtains" from various sources, some of whom he names, some of whom he doesn't. Sometimes his exit polling data bears a resemblance to reality; usually, it's not even close. He had Bush up in Florida by something like 24 points in 2000 originally, and we all know how that turned out. In any case, it's not as if you can go to his site and expect to get nationwide exit polling - you'll see results for two counties in Ohio, three in Florida, one in Nebraska... that kind of thing. And he'll pick and choose to post only the polls he wants to post, either because he wants to turn out more pro-Bush voters in those areas or because he wants to show how far ahead Bush is and make the outcome seem inevitable. Some people who seem to think he's an unbiased source of news apparently don't realize he does these things, but he does. And he doesn't see anything wrong with it; he thinks he's just being an "editor".

        There is no such thing as a reliable source of exit polling data in this country, and IMO there shouldn't be. There was a small controversy about this after the last election - a few people (like Drudge) questioning why they shouldn't post exit poll data in advance - but these people are mostly idiots who don't understand how an election actually works (again, like Drudge).

        So you will not be able to get a "live tally" of the vote from overseas or anywhere else, because no such thing exists. The vote tallies are counted after the polls close, and are only then reported by each polling district. So you will not see any official numbers at all until the first polls close on the east coast - not sure exactly when that is, but probably around 7 PM EST.

        If you do find anything on the net that claims to have election results or polling data prior to the polls closing, don't believe the results. Anyone can make up numbers and guys like Drudge are only too eager to post them without any verification at all (I half-believe he makes up some of his un-sourced numbers himself). If, at the end of the night, they don't match the official totals, they'll just say "oh well, samples don't always match the totals, etc. etc." when they could have just as easily just been pulling those numbers out of their asses.

        People don't always answer truthfully in exit polls anyway. Our votes are supposed to be private and honestly, if somebody I didn't know asked me who I voted for outside a polling place, I probably would lie. It's none of their business who I voted for and how do I know who they say they are anyway? They could be working for the guy I voted against. They could be a group of drunken supporters of the other guy pretending to be pollsters and out to beat up people who voted for my candidate. I'd probably say I wrote somebody in.

        Point is, exit polls are not reliable - they're not reliable even if they're real exit polls, and half of what you see on the net is made up anyway. This is why the major nets agreed not to rely on them so heavily anymore. Wait for the official results, which will come after the polls close.

  • CNN to Go (Score:5, Informative)

    by kngthdn ( 820601 ) * on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:42PM (#10696372)
    I suggest mobile.cnn.com [cnn.com], if you can get it on your phone. On my phone (AT&T wireless), it has a bunch of pages like "Top Stories", "Full Results", "The Candidates", and "What's at Stake"

    Since I'll be volunteering up until the polls close, I suppose I'll be using it a lot...

    (after that, it's fox news all the way...I like my news the way I wanna hear it!)

  • There's this tech called Amplitude Modulation... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:43PM (#10696384)
    US election data doesn't compress into simple numbers very easily. I'd recommend those traveling use either a car-mounted or handheld radio... using the radio in AM mode would be highly recommended in most areas because news format stations are typically found there, although there are a few FM news/talk stations in existance.

    First off. Expect to know nothing useful until polls close. It's US media tradition not to release exit poll data or make winner projections until the polls in any given state are closed under the theory that early victory news might discurage turnout and affect the outcome. Therefore, don't bother looking for results during the daytime. Nobody's going to be projecting a winner until well into primetime. The only major site that might break this tradition is The Drudge Report [drudgereport.com], but its unknown what kind of info Drudge will get.

    Then there's the complexity of the Electoral College system. Really, there isn't one election happening tomorrow, there's fifty state elections plus one more for D.C. over which slate of electors to send forward. Having a running total of the national popular vote is not useful data because that's data that doesn't lead to anything.

    Further complexing things is that there's also hundreds of Congressional races tomorrow because every seat in the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate come up for re-election as they do every two years. The control of the majority of both of those bodies will be in play tomorrow as well. And let's not forget that many states have ballot question issues and local offices in play as well.

    So... when you add it all up there's over 500 seperate races of national importance to consider tomorrow. No small text screen can do it justice... use radio and TV and let them explain it one by one. Sit back, and relax... the pundits will be on all night because there's going to be a lot for them to talk about.

  • Monitoring is not the same as influencing... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NotQuiteReal ( 608241 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:44PM (#10696391) Journal
    Just look in a paper, on Wednesday.

    This same technique of delayed gratification has served me well for lots of things.

    The resultes don't change by knowing them sooner.

  • Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shawn(at)fsu ( 447153 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:44PM (#10696393) Homepage
    Why does real time monitoring matter, I mean look at the last presidential election. I think all this polling and up to the second exit polls are only adding to the problem. In the grand scheme(sp?) does it affect you if you know today or three days from now who the president will be. Look at the days before internet before tv, before radio, before wire service when information took days to get across country. The world still worked. Life will go on. Besides I doubt there will be a conclusive answer for weeks.

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by marktaw.com ( 816752 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @12:23AM (#10696692) Homepage
      Because the elections are a spectator sport just like the World Series.

      It's just not the same without knowing in real time with commentary and slow motion replays.

    • Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)

      by St. Arbirix ( 218306 )
      This is the follow-up report [cnn.com] explaining how it was real-time poll monitoring that was completely responsible for the confusion after the last election. They (CNN and maybe the others) seem to have decided to be responsible (in the Jon Stewart sense) and won't be fighting so haphazardly for meaningless tidbits of data which will, on the whole, only confuse matters while at the same time disgusting viewers.

      Besides, realtime monitoring will only skew the results of the election more towards an ugly tie. Once
  • I know the '92 US Presidential election returns were available online in near-real-time.

    If memory serves, someone did this in '88 also, using a simple "dump results and disconnect" server that you could telnet to. Anyone else remember an '88 online election return?

    How about '84? '80? '76? '72?

    We didn't have the 'net before '69, but anyone remember if any computing centers had running totals for their users in the '70s or before?

  • Are you serious? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bscott ( 460706 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:47PM (#10696410)
    I personally wish I could just crawl into a cave and leaving a wake-up call for inaguration day. I can't IMAGINE wanting to keep up with the minute-by-minute details of what'll doubtless be only the beginning of a weeks-long debacle. Put it another way - do you really need to go out of your way to get "information" of questionable relevance a few seconds before you would anyway? It's the Presidential election, you'd have to be pretty careful NOT to find out about anything really significant.

    Relax. Get a book-on-tape of something you've always wanted to read for your journey. Use the time wisely instead of suckling at the mass-media tit because they've told you that you MUST be INFORMED every MINUTE of the DAY, by US!

    • Re:Are you serious? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dghcasp ( 459766 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @01:02AM (#10696979)
      I can't IMAGINE wanting to keep up with the minute-by-minute details...

      There's a bunch of people out there who like to watch sports; personally, I can't understand why. It's not like it means anything, and you can find out the results the next day. How exactly is a bunch of millionaires who weren't born in your city beating another bunch of millionaires who weren't born in their city a personal victory for you?

      Some of us feel about politics the way others feel about sports.

  • Voting is not a spectator sport. I do not want to know who wins until they win. Somehow watching our country fall to peices isn't that enthralling.

    That, and I fear I will grow dumber by being on the same coast as Florida...
  • Find a hotel lobby. They always have the talking-head news on.

    For $5 or less at "the dollar store" you can usually find a nice AM/FM radio. For $20 you can usually find one with a suitable geek factor.

    Find a bar, and threaten to bust up the joint unless they show the election returns.

  • real time monitoring (Score:5, Funny)

    by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:53PM (#10696478) Homepage
    For real-time monitoring of the election results, read the morning paper every day. Repeat until mid-December.

  • SMS (Score:5, Funny)

    by cuteseal ( 794590 ) on Monday November 01, 2004 @11:54PM (#10696482) Homepage
    To make sure your favourite idol returns next year, SMS "BUSH" or "KERRY" to "IDOLS04". Voting lines open at the end of tonight's show.

    More coming up... after the break.

  • Many, many, states have websites that'll give totals as they roll in. Here's the page for Virginia [vipnet.org].

    Still, the best way is to start watching the returns as the polls close. I think the earliest closings are 6p EST. I think we'll probably have a good idea of the winner by 11p EST. If Kerry doesn't take Ohio and Florida, I don't think he'll be able to make it up in the Mountain states and the west.
  • My feeling is that tomorrow you will be able to go to a random web site anywhere in the world and you will find information about the election.

    As a Canadian I can tell you that this is the first time that I see people who seems to care more about an American election than about our own last one. I think many people around the world feel the same. So information will be available anywhere.

  • I work at home and don't have a TV. I will turn the radio off, of course, but that may not be enough. I know I must avoid the news sites, but will it be safe to visit Slashdot?

  • Sad (Score:2)

    by Erwos ( 553607 )
    Sad to say it, but the election ain't gonna be over until the courts rule on it. There are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle with lawyer-attack-dogs ready to start filing lawsuits no matter what happens. A good example of this is http://www.nov3.us. I get the strong impression that they're going to be causing a ruckus if Bush comes out with a win regardless of whether it was fair or not. Certainly, I'm sure the Republicans are also ready for a legal fight if Kerry wins.

    I really appreciate your int
  • I'll be having some good coverage at wcsg.org [wcsg.org] in the evening. Our news dept will be on top of it. I'll have rss feeds etc.

  • While I can't say definitively... (Score:3, Informative)

    by rindeee ( 530084 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @12:01AM (#10696541)
    ...I would be quite comfortable hazzarding a guess that Yahoo will have real time coverage (including Yahoo! Mobile which should work fine on any PDA/Phone). Given the very impressive real time World Series coverage they had, surely they'll do at least as much during the election. Here's a link that should prove valuable:

    http://dir.yahoo.com/government/u_s__government/po litics/elections/presidential_elections/2004_presi dential_election/ [yahoo.com]

    Hope this helps.

  • Megapundit.com (Score:3, Informative)

    by FatRatBastard ( 7583 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @12:02AM (#10696549) Homepage
    Don't run the site, but ran across this [megapundit.com] tonight (via Wizbang). Its being run by a blogger, so how quickly things get updated I have no idea, but it looks pretty promising.
  • My cell phone already has 2 catagories in the news headlines page that tell the number of electorial votes for each candidate.
  • Depending on who wins, the power will either stay up to support your connection, or all of the US will go dark...very, very dark. Just monitor the skyline out the window of your hotel.

    Best hope that Kerry wins so the mail will continue to go thru... God knows the coasts have been unguarded for so long it makes little sense now to pay them heed.

  • www.electoral-vote.com (Score:3, Informative)

    by call -151 ( 230520 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @12:08AM (#10696597) Homepage
    Try electoral-vote.com [electoral-vote.com]. The maintainer does a great job following current polls state-by-state with electoral vote totals and has promised to keep the site current tomorrow as results come in. Sometimes the site has been flaky under heavy loads, in which case you should try electoral-vote3.com, electoral-vote4.com as well.

  • The way I see it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by katpurz ( 721210 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @12:08AM (#10696598)
    > I live in Australia so I can't get them through watching CNN and so forth

    The way I see it, you're about 9 hours ahead of us (?) so why don't YOU tell US the outcome???

  • this is good for (Score:5, Informative)

    by BigBir3d ( 454486 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @12:17AM (#10696656) Journal
    a non-partisan view.

    I will stay up all night election night and update the site in real time. I am NOT promising to stay up until we know who the president is. I would definitely like to go to bed sometime during the month of November.


    http://www.electoral-vote.com/ [electoral-vote.com]

  • I live in Australia too... (Score:5, Funny)

    by B747SP ( 179471 ) <slashdot@selfabusedelephant.com> on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @12:18AM (#10696660)
    I live in Australia so I can't get them through watching CNN and so forth.

    I live in Australia too, and I gotta tell ya, it is infinitely frustrating. This election directly affects all of us here, and everyone in the other fifty (or however many it is) states has the constitutional right to vote, why not us? I suppose Hawaii went through the same thing at one stage, being separated from the mainland just like us.

  • Watch the stocket market (Score:5, Interesting)

    by macdaddy ( 38372 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @12:46AM (#10696884) Homepage Journal
    For me all I have to do is watch the value of one of my stocks. Specifically I just have to watch the value of my StemCells, Inc (Nasdaq: STEM) [yahoo.com] stock. I own 3000 shares of it. If Kerry is doing well then so will my stock. If Kerry isn't doing so well then my stock value will probably go down. Personally I am predicting a record payday for me tomorrow. So are many others apparently. Stay tuned...

  • REAL monitoring (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nordicfrost ( 118437 ) * on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @12:51AM (#10696907)
    You see, Colin Powell invited representatives from the OSCE (org. for security and cooperation in Europe) to actually monitor the election. Now they are BARRED from the place wherre people cast their ballots, due t local rules. Member of Parliament in Norway, Bjørn Hernæs, said he was stunned but admired the ammount of self-rule the lokal states have.


    Personally, I think it is because the lokal election stations are so badly run, the states fear what might happen if someone saw and documented it.

  • Resultron! (Score:4, Informative)

    by cafebabe ( 151509 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @01:02AM (#10696974)
    The DCCC* is running a site called RESULTRON [democraticaction.org] that will send out results for the presidential and congressional races by SMS and RSS.

    *Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee

  • What about text (Score:3, Insightful)

    by emtboy9 ( 99534 ) <jeff AT jefflane DOT org> on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @01:02AM (#10696977) Homepage
    Finding ongoing online coverage should be fairly easy, but what about getting recurrant updates via text messages, SMS or whatever?

    I would love to get updates throughout the day via my cell. Anyone have any sites that provide text message updates for election day?

  • Don't (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GrouchoMarx ( 153170 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @01:09AM (#10697011) Homepage
    It's the need for insta-polls and immediate results and such on the part of the voting populace that, in part, caused the mess of the 2000 election. Everyone wanted to know NOW who won each state, so the networks call elections the instant the polls close. Of course, they forgot that some of Floria's polls close later. Did that affect the turnout in those areas? Maybe. But it also meant that suddenly everyone ASSUMED Gore carried Florida.

    Then when Fox News decided to call Florida for Bush instead, just to be biased about it, everyone suddenly reversed it and called the election for Bush, and with it the national results. So everyone ASSUMED that Bush was President-Elect.

    Then the recount mess began, and it APPEARED that Gore had lost but was whining about it. In fact, THE ELECTION WAS NOT OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED YET. But because people wanted a reality TV show instead of real news, and the networks of course gave it to them, public perception was screwed to hell. That's what caused the mess in 2000, more than anything else.

    You'll find out who won tomorrow morning. Or more likely, you'll find out which states are being contested due to election fraud tomorrow morning. Don't encourage the 3 ring circus.

  • My tally room: (Score:3, Funny)

    by dameron ( 307970 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @01:12AM (#10697036)
    2 six packs:

    3 beers = I care who wins West Virginia

    6 beers = I'm screaming "fuck" or "yeah" over and over.

    9 beers = Oregon looks kinda shapely

    12 beers = I wake up next to the District of Columbia and feel tired but nasty...

    Voting's a lot like college...

    -dameron

  • Official results won't be in for days... (Score:5, Informative)

    by kirkjobsluder ( 520465 ) <kirk@@@jobsluder...net> on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @01:26AM (#10697116) Homepage
    Seriously folks, in battleground states like Florida and Ohio, the results might depend on:

    * provisional ballots cast due to challenges on election day.
    * absentee ballots trickling in over the rest of the month.

  • Wow nice title (Score:3, Funny)

    by LordHatrus ( 763508 ) <slashdot@clockf[ ].com ['ort' in gap]> on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @01:42AM (#10697210) Homepage
    WHOA Ok, who else read "Monitor U.S. Erections" the first time?!

  • Phones: BBC...or Google ...or a gambling site (Score:3, Informative)

    by blastedtokyo ( 540215 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @01:47AM (#10697230)
    I live in Japan and use BBC's text only pages (http://news.bbc.co.uk/text_only.stm) on my phone all the time. I'm sure they'll keep a decent tally on their 'Americas' page.

    Otherwise, you use Google's WAP/cHTML interface to screenscrape your favorite news site and turn it into something readable on your phone. Just bookmark that and you're ready to go. Also on the google front, you could sign up for news alerts and have those mailed to your phone.

    Finally, you might try to look at a gambling website like http://www.tradesports.com and just bookmark the page of the 'price' of the presidency. The the closer to $1 the price reaches, the more likely that guy will win.

  • Vote Returns Slower than in the 19th Century? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ron Bennett ( 14590 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @02:29AM (#10697462) Homepage
    Most all vote returns used to be processed with the night / next day after the Presidential election.

    Now it takes weeks? Welcome to the 19th century - though I think by the tail end of that century (late 1800s), votes were counted relatively quickly compared to how long votes in 2004 will likely take to count.

    Digressing a bit here ... but it seems various parts of American (U.S.) society are going backwords; how is it that many "third world" countries, some with populations rivaling that of the U.S., can conduct an election on ONE day (as opposed to the 30 days some Americans have; totally unnecessary - whatever happen to voting being a civic duty in which one dedicated part of their day to perform, but I digress) and have most, if not all, votes counted within a day or two. For example, the recent election in Afganistan (with a population of about 28 million) didn't take weeks to count despite how primative the country is - how did they do it so fast? Well, the same way many other countries do ... simple ballots, and a lot of people counting (or machines for scan countable ballots) - simple, fast, and verifiable.

    Voting in the U.S. has degenerated into something that even a decade or so ago was unimaginable to most folks - vote monitors from other countries watching our elections, allowing people to vote over many weeks instead of one day, numerous flawed/corrupt voting systems, and vote counting that take weeks, and possibly longer...

    This is progress? And to think many older people still speak of the Dewey / Truman election and how long it took to get results ... yep, a whole whopping night ... and they thought that was slow. In 2004, it will likely take much, much longer to determine who the President is than it did in 1948 or maybe even longer than in 1888!

    Ron Bennett

  • Online live updated applet (Score:4, Informative)

    by EQ ( 28372 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @02:29AM (#10697468) Homepage Journal
    http://www.foxnews.com/

    There is an applet called "Track Your Races -- Election Tracker" toward the bottom of the main display segement - it allows you to monitor the Presidential election and up to 10 other state/congression races and/or ballot issues, it is live updated, and based on returns, not exit polls.

    Set aside your preconceptions about Fox, the app is useful for what you say you want, and numbers are numbers.

  • Um, why? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mwood ( 25379 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @10:55AM (#10699779)
    Votes may be quantized, but they don't exhibit the Observer Paradox. Staring at the incomplete results all day won't change the outcome. I'll have to live with the results for years no matter what, so I generally heave a sigh of relief after voting, ignore the news for the rest of the day, and read the *actual*, *effective* result in the next day's newspaper. I can wait.

Slashdot Top Deals

"What man has done, man can aspire to do." -- Jerry Pournelle, about space flight

Close