by Caleb Johnson on February 15, 2011 at 03:00 PM

Despite what Roger Ebert has said about video games not being art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. will host an entire exhibition next year dedicated to the medium. 'The Art of Video Games,' which runs from March 16th, 2012 to September 9th, will feature interviews with several artists and developers, game footage spanning 40 years, a thorough history of gaming consoles, ...
by Terrence O'Brien on August 19, 2010 at 06:30 PM

Electronic voting machines are notoriously buggy and hackable. Even the manufacturers of DRE (direct recording electronic) voting talliers have admitted so much. Some states have even gone as far as to ban the touchscreen devices. While they may not be great at recording votes (or leaving a paper trail), it turns out their outdated PC-like innards are perfect for playing retro arcade games. This ...
by Terrence O'Brien on May 16, 2010 at 05:00 PM

Last week, we reported that the GOP planned to hand off the responsibility of developing a party platform to its rank-and-file (and Web-connected) members. Now Republican Whip Eric Cantor is climbing aboard the participatory government train with YouCut.
The premise is simple: visitors are presented with a list of government programs that are viewed by the Republican party as wasteful. Anyone ...
by Leila Brillson on April 13, 2010 at 09:30 AM

Now in its 14th year, the Webby's People's Voice Awards celebrate excellence, humor, innovation and talent... on the Net. Nominees were announced this morning, and from Isabella Rosellini's amusing and sensual "Green Porno" to The Onion News Network's freaking hilarious coverage of "Sony's New Stupid Piece of...," the Webby's rely on audience votes, viral schemes and general hype to tally votes. ...
by Warren Riddle on April 9, 2010 at 11:35 AM

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines....
U.S. politicians have increasingly turned to social networking to rally support and spread information. For the British government, though, Facebook isn't just a medium for political communication and discussion anymore, as it's being actively used to raise voter awareness. The social networking site has paired with England's ...
by Terrence O'Brien on November 4, 2008 at 12:10 PM

Regardless of your political affiliation, there's no denying the historic nature of today's presidential race. Turnout for the U.S. election is expected to reach record numbers. So how do you keep up with the election and gather relevant information without succumbing to the noise and theatrics of the 24-hour-cable news channels? Well, the Internet (and NPR) are here to help offer you more ...
by Tim Stevens on October 24, 2008 at 05:32 PM

If you're American, it's nearly time to do your civic duty and pick the lesser of two evils for the greater good... and then to wonder if that vote actually got counted. With Diebold admitting its own machines are utterly insecure, competitor Sequoia is now under the microscope and, after a little quality time with the company's machines, Princeton researchers have filed a 158 page report on the ...
by Terrence O'Brien on October 22, 2008 at 05:25 PM

It's actually a 'Simpsons' joke -- Homer selects Barack Obama repeatedly, yet the electronic voting machine disregards his choice and racks up votes for John McCain. The joke would be pretty damn funny too, if it weren't actually happening in West Virginia and Ohio right now. In the last few election cycles, the big names in bungled elections were Ohio and Diebold (which has been renamed Premier ...
by Kaiser Hwang on October 21, 2008 at 11:15 AM

We've sent people to the moon, learned how to tranmist data at the speed of light, and even mapped the world inside of a browser. But voting electronically? Still working on it. Even more disappointing is the fact that less-developed countries like Brazil have eclipsed our efficiency in voting by several orders of magnitude. Thankfully, we're quick to learn from our mistakes, and reports are ...
by Evan Shamoon on September 9, 2008 at 05:20 PM

More bad news for those hoping for a legitimate presidential election in November. The University of California in Santa Barbara's Security Group has released a video that shows a virus attack being carried out against the Sequoia, CA voting system. The video was apparently shot as part of the "Top-To-Bottom Review" organized by the California Secretary of State in July 2007 -- but for some ...
by Darren Murph on August 25, 2008 at 02:25 PM

For years, Diebold has embarrassed itself by claiming that obvious faults were actually not faults at all, and during the past decade or so, it mastered the act of pointing the finger. Now that it has ironically renamed itself Premier Election Solutions, it's finally coming clean. According to spokesman Chris Riggall, a "critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being ...
by Tim Stevens on January 28, 2008 at 10:40 AM

For Americans living overseas, the process of voting in an election can be slow, painful, and unrewarding. American living abroad rely on mailed paper ballots that often aren't received by vote counters until well after a given candidate has been awarded the victory. However, for expatriate registered Democrats, voting in a primary will be easy and instantaneous this year thanks to a new online ...