Monitoring the U.S. Elections Online? 535
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."
try CNN (Score:5, Informative)
Re:try CNN (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/resul
The other link needs registration.
clickizzle (Score:5, Informative)
Re:auto-linking of URL (Score:5, Funny)
I love how somone just got modded +5 informative for making a link clickable.
Re:auto-linking of URL (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:auto-linking of URL (Score:3, Insightful)
Simpsons (Score:3, Funny)
If it wasn't for plagarism, where would we get our new ideas?
Re:Simpsons (Score:3, Funny)
If it wasn't for plagarism, where would we get our new ideas?
Re:try CNN (Score:4, Informative)
better yet, (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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)
As a European I support Bush and his ideology (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Informed decisions (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Please Stay Home Today (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Informed decisions (Score:4, Funny)
Want to know more??
Re:try CNN (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Australia has the Fox News Channel! (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Australia has the Fox News Channel! (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Australia has the Fox News Channel! (Score:4, Interesting)
The only one I ever bought involved someone stating that astrologic signs have gone out of alignment since antiquity (they have) and then the paper lamented about how the hell we are now supposed to know our future and if we are all really different than the stars predict. Main headline.
Re:Australia has the Fox News Channel! (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Australia has the Fox News Channel! (Score:4, Funny)
As a Canadian, I would like to add that it is also easy to look at Fox from outside the US and think, "Wow, this is terrible..."
Re:Australia has the Fox News Channel! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Australia has the Fox News Channel! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Australia has the Fox News Channel! (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't tend to watch TV news very often, but I don't see what's so bad with Fox News. The only complaint I've really seen leveled at Fox is that sometimes they cover stories CNN won't.
Also that their opinion programs give voice to Conservative (as well Liberal) viewpoints.
The BBC, on the other hand, has people weeping for Yasser Arafat [bbc.co.uk].
Re:Australia has the Fox News Channel! (Score:3, Insightful)
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]".
Most of those points, even the Food-for-Oil corruption, were alleged or suspected before the war. It is rather unfortunate, yes, that the W
Re:try CNN (Score:3, Funny)
Unfortunately civil rights haven't yet advanced enough to allow Australian People votes to help decide our collective fate. It just shows how the "master race" of Americans still holds their superiority over the rest of the poor souls ruled under the American Presidency.
Wikipedia has results & an index (Score:5, Informative)
Try (Score:3, Informative)
Does this exist? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Not EXACTLY what you're looking for... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Does this exist? (Score:3, Informative)
a few ideas (Score:5, Informative)
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)
Re:Wait for Diebold to tell you. (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing to see here. Move along... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nothing to see here. Move along... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Nothing to see here. Move along... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Nothing to see here. Move along... (Score:2)
Re:Nothing to see here. Move along... (Score:3, Interesting)
At which point, you're done contributing, and nothing you do has any further impact on the outcome.
You're saying that people will vote for a candidate because they've already heard they are going to win!
No, I'm saying that people will not get out and vote for a candidate that they've already heard will lose, and I've got history on my side - early calls in 1980 clearly affected turnout in the west. Larger turnout wouldn't have saved Carter, bu
Re:Nothing to see here. Move along... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Nothing to see here. Move along... (Score:3)
Because you are a bit of a banana republic who haven't quite got that election thing under control
Re:Nothing to see here. Move along... (Score:2)
Substitute Idaho, New York, Kansas, California, Utah, et cetera, as you see fit ;)
CNN to Go (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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.
small minority of Congress seriously contested (Score:2, Funny)
Handicappers are calling the Senate as 50-54 Republicans, with the rest Democrats or Independents. They are handicapping the House as likely to remain in Republican control.
Re:small minority of Congress seriously contested (Score:3, Funny)
I'll take the under on there being 104 Senators at the end of the night.
Monitoring is not the same as influencing... (Score:5, Insightful)
This same technique of delayed gratification has served me well for lots of things.
The resultes don't change by knowing them sooner.
Re:Monitoring is not the same as influencing... (Score:2)
Re:Monitoring is not the same as influencing... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Monitoring is not the same as influencing... (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, do you have any idea how fast the good stuff gets looted?
Re:Monitoring is not the same as influencing... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Monitoring is not the same as influencing... (Score:2)
I only watch the 7th game of the World Series, when I think about it.
I missed it this year.
Re:Monitoring is not the same as influencing... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Monitoring is not the same as influencing... (Score:3, Funny)
I like your idea- I'm going to run up to voters, stare at them, and then grab ahold and shake them.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just not the same without knowing in real time with commentary and slow motion replays.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Besides, realtime monitoring will only skew the results of the election more towards an ugly tie. Once
OT: Earliest online election totals? (Score:2)
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?
Re:OT: Earliest online election totals? (Score:2)
Indymedia (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.michaelmoore.com/electionwatch/index.p
Are you serious? (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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.
I don't want to hear a word of it until it is over (Score:2)
That, and I fear I will grow dumber by being on the same coast as Florida...
Go lotech (Score:2)
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)
SMS (Score:5, Funny)
More coming up... after the break.
Varies from State to State (Score:2)
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.
Almost anywhere (Score:2)
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.
Avoiding The US Election Online? (Score:2)
Sad (Score:2)
I really appreciate your int
good rss lean content (Score:2)
While I can't say definitively... (Score:3, Informative)
http://dir.yahoo.com/government/u_s__government/p
Hope this helps.
Megapundit.com (Score:3, Informative)
Cell phone (Score:2)
Very simple, actually... (Score:2)
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)
The way I see it... (Score:5, Funny)
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)
http://www.electoral-vote.com/ [electoral-vote.com]
I live in Australia too... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:I live in Australia too... (Score:4, Informative)
Watch the stocket market (Score:5, Interesting)
REAL monitoring (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
*Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
What about text (Score:3, Insightful)
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:What about text (Score:3, Informative)
Don't (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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)
* 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)
Phones: BBC...or Google ...or a gambling site (Score:3, Informative)
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)
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
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
Ron Bennett
Online live updated applet (Score:4, Informative)
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)
Re:Depends on what you mean by "real time" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Absentee Ballots (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets say that in voting precinct 911, John Doe gets 5382 votes, and George Doe gets 6853 votes. You'd have to have 1471 or more absentee ballots in that precinct before they'd even open the ballots. Basically, 1470 absentee ballots can't affect the outcome.
(This is my understanding from what I remember of the Florida idiocy 4 years ago, correct as necessary)
Re:There is no US election (Score:3, Insightful)
Does anyone want to start an argument that there exists a national board of elections which will talley *anything* tomorrow?
Re:18% Bush, 43% Kerry (Score:4, Interesting)
Cant read your site (Score:5, Insightful)
Its too bad because I was interested in what you had to say
I call preachy bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
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...