Monitoring the U.S. Elections Online?

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."

Nothing to see here. Move along...

[general_re]

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....

There's this tech called Amplitude Modulation...

[LostCluster]

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...

[NotQuiteReal]

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?

[shawn(at)fsu]

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.

Are you serious?

[bscott]

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:Why?

[marktaw.com]

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 libertarians/conservatives can't support Bu

[erick99]

What's the point? In SlashDot you are preaching to the choir. The few of us that are republican, hold our positions as dearly as you hold yours.

Re:Monitoring is not the same as influencing...

[skyman8081]

The results don't change by knowing them sooner.

yeah they do.

A lot of stations called FL for gore back in 2000, when the polls in most of florida had closed(EST), but polls in the (heavily republican/conservative) Panhandle were still open(CST), which caused a lot of people who would have voted to not vote, or show up. This did cause confusion, and indirectly made the florida proplems a LOT worse. re-post: slashdot keeps re-checking the "post anonymously" box after I un-check it.

I hope you're right

[benzapp]

the longer people perceive the government is illigitmate and ineffectual, the closer we get to civil war. Personally, I really look forward to an all out conflict.

There is one thing America needs, and its more violence and bloodshed. The gods of war have been put aside for decades, peace and prosperity have gone on for too long. America is like an overripe fruit at the end of the harvest season, rotting with excessive sweetness.

The cycle of life must continue!

Re:Almost anywhere

[gibs]

As Wil Anderson (of Australian TV) succinctly put it, "Unlike the recent Australian federal election, the upcoming US election will decide who actually governs Australia for the next 4 years".

I know I'll be following it closely from down here!

What about text

[emtboy9]

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?

Re:Are you serious?

[dghcasp]

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.

Don't

[GrouchoMarx]

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.

Re:There is no US election

[Saint Stephen]

Flamebait? How can a simple statement of fact be flamebait?

Does anyone want to start an argument that there exists a national board of elections which will talley *anything* tomorrow?

Re:try CNN

[Sputum]

I don't think the reporters being honest matters when the ballot counters aren't.

Re:Don't

[HappyRonin]

This is far more insightful than funny...perhaps we need a gag order on the media until the polls close in ALL states?

better yet,

[twitter]

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!

Vote Returns Slower than in the 19th Century?

[Ron Bennett]

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

Re:I hope you're right

[lightknight]

Yeah, all I want for Christmas is a Civil War. But what would the two(?) sides be?

Personally, I'd like to see a war between the Libertarians (Capitalists, by any other name) and Socialists, but that's not going to happen. Instead, we'll have something incredibly f*cked up instead. Like the religious zealots (of the far right) vs. the greens (of the far left) vs. (I really don't want to know. My nightmares have enough material as it is).

The outcome of which will either be a theocracy (I'll kill myself, but I'll take a few of them with me), an authoritarian state (equally as bad "we live for each other"), or something just plane bad.

As a libertarian, I could almost live with the greens: I do not agree with a lot of what they have to say (Global Warming, etc.), but at least they are true to their principles. I can respect that. The religious nuts (Love Jesus or else) are just plain scary: a green can be reasoned with (hard evidence), a zealot (who hears God, who tells him to kill unbelievers, force people to "spread the word") cannot. It's hard to argue with someone when their entire basis for reality is composed of a book written by a bunch of guys wandering about in the desert. A power structure under any religion is a recipe for disaster (ever notice how every religion thinks they're right, and how every religion has its own factions, which also think that they are the only right ones, and everyone else is mistaken?).

If anything, the survivors will look back upon a second civil war the same way they look upon the first: if they are feeble-minded, they'll eat the garbage about how the other side was wrong, if not, they'll form their own opinion (after uncovering a few "misplaced" facts, conveniantly left out of the state copy of the history text).

The first civil war? Not about slavery, sorry folks. The first war was about state's rights, and we lost that one. Can't wait to see what the second one is about (hoping things will get better, reality tells me they will be worse).

Ranting, I know, but had to get it out.

Re:better yet,

[digitaltraveller]

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:Australia has the Fox News Channel!

[0utlaw]

Uhh...Fox News is owned by an Aussie, Rupert Murdoch [wikipedia.org]. So don't generalize and label Americans as stupid just as I'm not generalizing and labelling all Australians as conservative propagandists.

Re:Why libertarians/conservatives can't support Bu

[chaotcspidrmnky]

I'm all for not supporting Bush, but I'm a little wary of this site. This page says Bush

"Supported a policy of letting each state decide how to approach gay marriage rather than embed social engineering into the U.S. Constitution."

I'm not sure how that fits in with CNN's report of him saying

"I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and I think we ought to codify that one way or another," Bush told reporters at a White House news conference.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/30/bush.gay .marriage/ [cnn.com]

Or Fox reporting him saying

"Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman," he said in the statement. "If activist judges insist on redefining marriage by court order, the only alternative will be the constitutional process. We must do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,110509,00.html [foxnews.com]

Re:I live in Australia too...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta love Americans and their guns. Funny when you think about it.

In many places I can decide to buy a gun on my lunch break. And with little or no effort I can return to work after having time to stop for a quick sandwich and proceed to "practice" with my new toy on the office staff.

But if I want to drive a car I have to deal with leaner's permits, driver's education, mandatory instructor supervised driving hours, licensing tests, and liability INSURANCE.

So, I can go out and buy something specifically designed to kill things on a whim. But if I want to drive I have to actually learn under a structured program and pay for liability.

I'd love to see the day when owning a gun requires liability insurance. It only seems logical and fair.

Cant read your site

[billybob]

Ugh, your site gives me a headache. I'm sorry, I really wanted to read the article, but the ugly font, white text on black, and dark blue links on top of black that highlight with puke flourescent green... I just couldnt handle it after about 30 seconds :(

Its too bad because I was interested in what you had to say :P

Re:auto-linking of URL

[strider44]

Modding isn't exactly a competition, it's just about people browsing at their convenience. Karma be damned, the moderations were just to get a convenient link for the browsers to click.

Re:Australia has the Fox News Channel!

[abandonment]

no need to generalize and label americans - fox is as brain-dead as murdoch's policies and political views are.

the rest of the world watches news - america watches fox

sums it up pretty well ;P

Re:lokal?? Is your keyboard broken?

[Anonymous Coward]

So let's see you try some norwegian then!?

I call preachy bullshit

[caitsith01]

"no one who calls themself a Christian can honestly support John Kerry"

Buddy, if that's in the first sentence of your site, you can't really expect to be taken seriously.

Problems:

- you apparently assume all Christians are evangelical nutbags from the bible belt or devout Catholics
- you assume that Christians must obey the officers of the church, rather than interpreting the bible themselves and living by that interpretation
- you assume that you actually know what Jesus would say about John Kerry
- you presume to classify any Christian voting for Kerry as 'dishonest'

Other personal highlights:

"The only reason the AWB is dead today is because of the efforts of liberty-minded members of Congress."

Agreed, apart from the 'liberty-minded' part.

"He has supported the Law of the Sea Treaty which is an open assault on our national sovereignty."

If you actually knew how the Law of the Sea Treaty worked you could not sanely make this claim.

"Get that straight people: he [Bush] wanted to bolter (sic) the UN, not undermine it."

Right... sure...

"He gave us the USA PATRIOT Act which, under a future Clinton Administration, and one of those is bound to happen again, could be disasterous for freedom-loving Americans everywhere."

Sorry, can't write any more whilst laughing this hard...

Re:As a European I support Bush and his ideology

[gadgetscafe]

Ahem.. vote for whoever you want to, but just vote. Don't sit at home.

Re:Australia has the Fox News Channel!

[sultanoslack]

the rest of the world watches news - america watches fox

Actually there's this assumption that the US news tends to be a lot worse than the rest of the world's; I mean -- it's bad, but it's mostly just notable because it's so exported.

I mean -- Fox News, as bad as it is -- is still quite a step up from Germany's most popular newspaper, Bild Zeitung [www.bild.de] ("Picture Times"), or how about England's most read paper, The Sun [thesun.co.uk] ?

It's easy to look at Fox from inside the US and think, "Wow, this is terrible..." and it is, but that's not a unique phenomenon to the US and just as the UK tends to export The Guardian, the BBC, the Economist -- or Germany the Frankfurter Algemeine, Speigel or Die Zeit the US tends to export CNN, Newsweek, the New York Times, the New Yorker and so on. That's not to say that any of those are perfect, but they're markedly better.

Re:auto-linking of URL

[mrmeval]

Well since slashdot badly breaks Plain Old Text links a clickable link deserves a higher mod because of the extra work.

Informed decisions

[SeanDuggan]

I was once one of those people who advocated everyone voting, even to the point of those vans that drove along and offered to transport people to the polls. But now, having heard some peoples' rationales for their voting choices, I urge greater caution in who should vote. If you're not educated on the issues and where the politicians stand, don't vote. If you plan to vote a straight ticket because that's what your parents voted, don't vote. If you plan to vote a straight ticket because it's not what your parents vote, don't vote. If your reasoning for voting for a candidate is based upon his good looks, don't vote. (You laugh now, but I know several girls in high school who voted for Clinton because they thought he was the more good-looking candidate) Don't vote a certan way because it's how your church/school/workplace/therapy group has told you to vote.

In short, if you are making an informed decision on the ballot, by all means vote away. If not, please leave democracy in the hands of those who are competent to vote. Thank you.

Re:Australia has the Fox News Channel!

[Rayonic]

> LAst weekend Bild had a headline on the front page (on the goddam day the EU constitution was signed!) that the earth is going to flip on its axis and cause massive tidal waves.

The Earth, or the Earth's magnetic poles? One idea is crazier than the other.

Also, the signing of the EU constitution isn't that big of a deal, as it'll probably never get past the various national parliaments/referenda. Opinion polls show support for the EU at its lowest ever levels, and democracy has the same effect on EU legislation as sunlight has on vampires.

Re:Australia has the Fox News Channel!

[Hockney Twang]

To me, the problem is that so many people in the U.S. consider Fox to be "the news." They honest to god think that it is "fair and balanced" reporting. And they don't expect it to come with a slant, or any hint of sensationalism.

Please Stay Home Today

[Mr Guy]

People have been getting slammed recently for mentioning there are very valid reasons not to vote. Rights don't exist in a vacuum. The right to bear arms is supposed to come with the responsibility to take up those arms to defend this country against attack. The right of free speach adds the responsibility to defend the right to speak words that offend you. Freedom of religion makes us responsible to defend all against persecution as well as using our religion to strengthen and comfort the poor, weak, and downtrodden. The right to vote comes with the responsibility to educate yourselves. Quite frankly some people ignore this responsibility to the point they really should forfeit their right to vote.

If you blindly believe everything EITHER candidate says, stay home today.

If you think CNN is the word from on high and Fox is the devil, or the other way around, please stay home.

If you believe either candidate is A) planning on using the draft or B) unwilling to use the draft if they have to, stay home today.

If you think Kerry plans on only taxing the rich, or Bush plans on only taxing the poor, stay home today.

If you believe Kerry that the top 20% paying 67% of the governments tax revenue constitutes "the middle class paying the highest burden", please stay home today.

If you believe Bush that Kerry voting against tax breaks is the same as Kerry voting for raising taxes, please stay home today.
If you think Bush is right in making a political issue of a religious commitment to marriage, for no other reason than it's wrong for gays to get married, please stay home today.

If you think you should vote for Kerry because Edwards is young and Cheney is old, please stay home today.

If you think you should vote democrat because they somehow care about your ethnic group without any specific plans on what they will do to help you personally, please stay home today.

If you think you should vote republican because they somehow care about your ethnic group without any specific plans on what they will do to help you personally, please stay home today.

If you think the "major tax break" of not having to pay FICA on overseas workers is the reason that companies save millions of dollars a year paying Achmed 12k a year over paying John 60k a year, please stay home today.

Finally, if you think T. H. Kerry is an attractive women, please gouge your eyes out.

Re:Australia has the Fox News Channel!

[AlistairMcMillan]

In our defense. Fox is a television news channel. The Sun is a newspaper.

If you are going to compare the Fox News to something the UK, you should compare it to BBC News [bbc.co.uk], ITN [itn.co.uk], Channel4 [channel4.com] News, Five News [www.five.tv] or Sky News [sky.com].

Even the trashy news channels here, Five and ITN stand head and shoulders above Fox "Bees That Kill!!! after these messages..." News.

Um, why?

[mwood]

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.

Re: Please Stay Home Today

[Anonymous Coward]

" The right to bear arms is supposed to come with the responsibility to take up those arms to defend this country against attack."

- Incorrect. The right to bear arms is provided in preparation for a necessary defense of one's own rights FROM one's own government. We have the right to bear arms not only to defend ourselves from criminals (which, thank God above, we can still do) but also to defend ourselves from the U.S. Government. Our founding fathers saw it this way, as it knew what it was like to be oppressed by one's own government, not to defend against Ruskies or the like.

Re:Informed decisions

[ninjagin]

You know, even stupid, uninformed, shallow people have the right to vote, and it's a great country we have that allows them to do so. The idea that only well-informed, contemplative, insightful and well-reasoned people should vote is just plain nutty.

Would you say that only Harvard MBAs should start businesses? Would you say that only gay men should be allowed to tell people how to decorate or what to wear? Would you say that only dentists are allowed to tell kids to brush their teeth? It's an elitist concept that you're promulgating.

Maybe not everyone has your ability to stay informed on all the issues, and maybe they don't have well-reasoned and insightful opinions on all of them. Maybe they're too busy putting bread on the table and paying the bills. Maybe they prefer to watch a rerun of last week's WWF Smackdown over CSPAN coverage of the latest house vote. (I confess that I do prefer WWF Smackdown over almost all CSPAN coverage, myself.) Maybe they just don't care. Maybe they take cues on who they trust based on more emotional perceptions.

Once you accept the premise that democracy is best left to those who are competent to vote, you accept the notion that there are lesser people -- (the incompetent -- the great unwashed masses -- the halfwit tools of the elite) -- who just can't be trusted to pick the person or ballot initiative they like. Of course, once you marginalize a group, it's easy to restrict them from other things like jobs or health care services or educational opportunities or life itself. In Germany of the thirties, they executed these people first, years before they got around to the jews. I'm not suggesting you're a Nazi or anything, but I am pointing out that the slope is slippery and can lead to places that most people would prefer to avoid.

It's a hard thing to accept, I'll admit. A person who is voting for the guy with the best hairstyle has just as much of a vote as someone who's been doing weekly economic analyses and in-depth research on American sociopolitical issues and their effect on international relations. Seems a little unequal, to be sure. The upshot is that the people who vote on hairstyle preference are far far more unlikely to vote in elections at all. They're more likely to be excited about voting for the next American Idol.

If your worry is that the thoughtful, informed voters will be cancelled out by the tawdry whims of the great unwashed masses, be reassured by the knowledge that even thoughtful, informed voters can make bad choices, and have the additional comfort of knowing that the uninformed and uncaring can sometimes also have an innate understanding of people and issues without needing to examine the details.

Re:Australia has the Fox News Channel!

[Rayonic]

Uh, they claim to be "Fair and Balanced" when they clearly are not.

And I'm open to that suggestion, but nobody has actually shown me that they're more unbalanced than anyone else. The only examples I get are people saying "they are clearly not [fair and balanced]".

As to your sig, hindsight is always 20/20. Those were not the justifications given before the war.

Most of those points, even the Food-for-Oil corruption, were alleged or suspected before the war. It is rather unfortunate, yes, that the WMD evidence that the world's intelligence agencies put forth didn't really pan out.

On the other hand, if the police raid your house for drugs, but all they find are dead bodies, is it still not worth it?

If he's so bad, and everyone is so worried about it, why don't they form their own force and take over?

With all due respect, the Iraqis tried that. They were slaughtered. This isn't colonial times with muskets and sabres. Modern technology has made dictatorships all the more difficult to overcome.

It's easy to be the world's police when it's not your life on the line.

A wise man once said:
"If I can't support a war without having served in the military,
then you can't support gay marriage without having taken it up the ass a few times."