A week-old Pew report indicates 66 percent of Internet users have an online profile on a social networking site.
I’m not surprised by this, as nearly all of my friends, colleagues, and former coworkers and classmates have profiles on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter, or Digg, even if they use the social media sites infrequently.
We are jacked in &mdash and we are part of the 46 percent of Americans who use the Internet to follow the presidential campaigns and participate in online political fandom.
Is Internet voting far behind?
From the CNN/YouTube and MySpace/MTV debates to last weekend’s debut of a Twitter debate with designees of Barack Obama and John McCain, the <a href=”http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2008/06/elections-in-internet-era.html
“>election is just about online &mdash and the world is watching.
Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens, who joined the U.S. as a citizen last year, was recently asked how he thinks foreign citizens view American politics.
With extraordinary absorption, he said in this YouTube video. If I didn’t have a vote in American elections, somehow all I said didn’t count…because the most powerful person in the world was the one the Americans picked.
Everyone has a stake in it and everyone has an interest in it and because America is so open and its media is so extraordinary, everyone does feel…that almost they have a say. Of course this is a huge illusion but its a rather touching one.
Many forget that the Internet is an international network. Websites, for the most part, can be viewed globally. Whether you want to pseudo dial 411 for election information or play god and choose electoral votes for states, there is something for everyone online.
Obama and McCain know this. It doesn’t really matter that McCain doesn’t know how to use a computer because their political advisors know without a web presence, their candidates would lose.
Speaking of the election cycle, we know that annual S&P returns are interminably linked to U.S. elections and so it is fair to predict the rising price of fuel will only go up.
Related posts:
- Internet Fame: Who Has It and Why?
- How Obama Ordering a Hamburger is a Lesson and a Warning for Every Chief Executive
- Do You Care That @BarackObama Doesn’t Tweet?
Comments:
Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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{ 5 comments }
Whoa, that S & P article is VERY interesting. I will remember this in 2012!
And I don’t think there will ever be voting online. Tell me, how could we POSSIBLY make it fair? I sat here and pondered it for a long time. There are SO many ways that could go wrong, aren’t there?
How would online voting be unfair? People could choose from showing up at a polling location and using a public kiosk or could do it from home/work.
If online banking is fair and secure, why not voting?
People who do not care about voting would sell their voter’s user name and password for 5 or 10 bucks. Or I could probably convince my Grandparents to let me have their online voter username and password because they don’t understand a thing about the internet.
I think it would be a huge scam that would end up being very un-democratic.
I haven’t looked into the studies on the subject, but I’m thinking of online voting via input of one’s social security number or a national ID number or such. Who would sell those?
Or… people wouldn’t be able to vote from home. They’d still have to go to a polling location or a public kiosk somewhere, but it would all be by computer.
here’s a new site that is a great alternative for online election coverage:
http://www.brobama.org
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