Starting a Political Career with Open Source?

byronmiller desires to get to the root of the following issue: "I have chosen to run for office to represent the people of the 16th district of Pennsylvania. I am looking for software and solutions to help manage a grass roots and budget friendly campaign. What applications are available for everything from district management/contact management solutions to online fund raising and campaign management solutions? We are already rolling out staff PC's running Suse 9.2, OpenOffice.org and of course Firefox. Are there any collaboration suites and mail systems that we can use for calendaring, notes, email and conferencing? Anyone build a campaign using open source technology or is Politics still only putting money where your mouth is? Technology is a major initiative of my campaign and i'm very interested in what political software and civic solutions are available - especially experience and reviews of such."

Technology is...

[Anonymous Coward]

best on your side with electronic voting. Just make sure your vote-count is an unsigned long long field, and your opponent is a signed char.

That's my district!

[slashkitty]

You know, you can't trust everyone here because they are not all on your site. You might want to try dailykos or something like that if you're looking for advice.

That said, I suggest you go 100% Microsoft. Outlook does wonders. Switch your phones to Skype. Distribute your press releases on Kazaa... Hope that helps.