November 2008 Archives

Sometimes the universe freaks me out a bit. Monday I guest taught "Ms. Stollwerk's" world history class in the South Bronx. I volunteered to teach the scientific revolution since I took an excellent class (from the inimitable Prof. Manning) on that period of history at MIT. In the course of one of my lectures to these high schoolers, we talked about gravity and why objects fall toward the Earth (i.e., why doesn't gravity pull us upwards?). And I explained that everything has a gravitational pull, but that small objects, such as this marker or that sticky-note pad, have tiny, tiny gravitational effects that are way too small too feel. Only massive objects, such as the Earth, tug at us with enough force that they affect our lives. And, lamely attempting to connect to the students, I followed up this statement with "I'm sure there's a Yo Mama joke in there somewhere..."

Yes, okay, I'm at least a year too late with the joke. And yes, okay, no one laughed. But, I get home from NYC and check my RSS feeds and what is the XKCD comic for the day?



Freaky.

I think it's ridiculous that a bare majority of voters can amend a state constitution, but that's not the question at issue today in California. Instead, Prop 8 opponents (i.e., the side of justice and equality) have filed suit saying that Prop 8 is a "revision" to the constituion rather than an "amendment." And since I figure you all are just as ignorant as I am about the distinction, here's a good primer.

<b>Update</b>: After mulling this over for a day, I'm against this lawsuit. I think the appropriate action is to put the issue on the ballot in 2010 (either in the primary or general, whichever one gay rights activists think will be better). And in that case, we would want to argue that striking down Prop 8 would be an "amendment" and not a "revision" (so that we wouldn't have to garner support from 2/3rds of the legislature). Filing this suit undercuts that claim and also undermines the credible of the movement with the voters. Convincing 52% of Californian's to support gay marriage in 2010 will be a lot easier if we don't attempt to throw out their votes with a lawsuit today.

For the better part of a year I worked for Google but couldn't tell people the details of my work because of an NDA. Over the past few months the details of the project have emerged and this weekend the true promise of the project came to fruition. So, let me introduce you to the Voting Information project.

The goal of the Voting Information Project (VIP) is to free election data from the confines of state and county databases. This pursuit fits nicely with Google's mission statement of "organizing the world's information" and the project is a partnership of the search company, Pew, and JEHT. We started in early 2007 with the long-term goal of creating an open format that states could use to publish their election geographic and ballot information, and that organizations like the League of Women Voters could layer candidate questionnaire responses over.

For this election, we focused on election geography, specifically informing citizens where their polling location is. Past attempts at a nationwide polling place locater had failed because not all states or counties were willing to share information. However, with the advent of nationwide voter files, one step of the process was complete: every registered voter in the U.S. could be matched to a precinct. Google devoted many resources this summer filling in the second piece of the puzzle: matching precincts to polling location. Now, every registered voter should be able to find his or her poll location here. (The Obama campaign also used this strategy.)

But, what about new registrants (or even same day registrants)? If they live at an address without another registered voter, Google's strategy will fail. That's where VIP comes in. Participating states and counties, distribute their street segment infomation (in a common format), which matches all addresses in the state to a precinct and then a polling location. These street segments are exactly how registrars themselves determine the precinct of new registrants, so they are very reliable.

I'm happy to announce that this past weekend, Google combined these two strategies at maps.google.com/vote. Test it out! One of my Princeton colleagues hadn't realized that her polling location had moved until she tried the application, You can even put the app on your own website as a gadget. Also, the website got some press play from the NYTimes and Te The Today Show <video>. So that's what I've been up to.

Also, go vote!