Boing Boing: Technology voting guide for 2006 US elections

Thursday, November 2, 2006

Technology voting guide for 2006 US elections

Over at CNET, Declan McCullagh has an article and accompanying map comparing candidates' tech voting records with their rhetoric. Declan adds,

It's easy for politicians to claim to have done well by technology. Democratic Sen. John Kerry, for instance, made fundraising pilgrimages to Silicon Valley and claimed to have a reasonable tech platform. But in a scorecard rating tech-related votes that we've posted today, Kerry came in second-to-last in the entire U.S. Senate.
I don't mean to pick on Democrats (in fact, the Democrats did slightly better overall than Republicans in the House of Representative), just political hypocrisy. And of course most everyone failed.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Making Light has some critical words about the guide: Link. Snip:

[By] CNET’s own admission in their linked article (by Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache), their system for ranking lawmakers’ “tech voting records” gives lawmakers points for supporting a substantial list of big-business priorities, such as increased government handouts to high-tech corporations and further restrictions on the rights of individuals to bring lawsuits against them. It also gives the same lawmakers no points at at all for supporting net neutrality, because “that legislation has generated sufficient division among high-tech companies and users to render it too difficult to pick a clear winner or loser.”

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:33:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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