Tag: ELECTIONS

If you ask us, one of the greatest gifts the Web has given us is the ability to be absolutely neurotic and obsessive spectators of the sport we call politics. Every fumble, dirty play and minuscule statistical update is ours to voraciously devour. With the 2010 midterm elections today, some of you may be wondering how to keep tabs on the flood of electoral news. Thankfully, we're here to help. ...

You've probably never heard of Russ Carnahan, the incumbent Democratic congressman from Missouri's third district. There isn't much about Carnahan that would elevate him to national prominence, except perhaps his latest attack ad against Republican challenger Ed Martin. Carnahan has turned to the world of casual Flash games to peg his opponent as unethical and a careless spender of tax payer ...

Brutal honesty here: on election day this past November, the entire Engadget staff (well, those of us with US passports) collectively agreed that casting our vote via SMS or some other incredibly simple method would be infinitely more awesome than trudging out in the streets and waiting in hour-long lines. Clearly, some higher-ups in Estonia are on board with that concept, as its Parliament has ...

Apparently when Obama talks about "change" he means absolutely everything. It's the only way that we can explain the fact that this confirmed Mac user is lugging a Microsoft Zune to the gym. We know that President Bush has an iPod, so the only reason we can figure that the President-elect is using a music player he can't even sync with his computer (Zunes are not yet Mac-compatible) is out of a ...

We know that overzealous partisan hacks on both sides of the aisle will buy into any crazy accusation tossed at their political opponents, but this is the first time we've ever heard of a group getting so desperate that they were taken in by a so called 419 scam (like those Nigerian princes that keep e-mailing you about their inaccessible fortune). In the last, floundering days of the ...

Despite the looming possibility that incoming president Barack Obama may have to give up e-mail, there is still strong expectation that an Obama administration will be sensitive to technology issues. One of those reasons is his continued appointment of people with deep connections to cyber culture. Obama's latest appointment is Tom Daschle as head of Health and Human Services (we thought that ...

I'm sure we don't have to tell you that Barack Obama has changed how the Web is leveraged in politics. Sure, Gore and Bush dabbled, and Dean and his campaign manager Joe Trippi showed you could build a base and raise enormous amounts of money, but it took the Obama campaign to prove that you could practically replace the traditional party machine with social-networking. Perhaps we're being a bit ...

Barack Obama has made quite a stir since winning the election two weeks ago. He's promising change, big change, and with Democrats taking control of the House and Senate, he should have all the tools he needs to deliver it. His promises may be big, but Assistant Professor John Hart at the University of Michigan is highlighting his persona in something very, very small, by creating a series of ...

This week, video game design company Zen Soft launched Super Obama World, an online video game starring the President-Elect, himself, we learned from the Daily Mail. Owing an obvious debt to Super Mario World -- the classic Super Nintendo game -- Super Obama World utilizes a similar side-scrolling format and squat, cartoonish characters. This, of course, is not President-Elect Obama's first ...

This was a seminal election year, wasn't it? In a time of economic downturn, war, natural disasters, and, uh, 'Gears of War,' a little change was needed -- both in the world, and in the way one presidential candidate got his message out to a younger, more tech-savvy crowd. Yes, Barack Obama did the unthinkable and set up a consistent base of communication with a generation of people that ...

Should video gamers be wary of President-Elect Obama? For at least the past four decades, political candidates and government officials (and their spouses) have been slinging blame at the entertainment industry's products (movies, music, video games) for the decaying, lazy, and apathetic aspects of society. For example, in 1985, then-Senator Al Gore's wife Tipper co-founded the Parents Music ...

It used to be that the only place you could get behind the scenes photos of political campaigns was from established photo-journalists published in mainstream print media outlets like Time and Life. Much like his methods for fund-raising and grass-roots organizing, Obama seems to be taking a more transparent, Web-oriented approach to photography and the campaign image. The historic night with ...

For all of the worrying over voter fraud, voter suppression, and voting machine meltdowns, this year's presidential election went surprisingly smoothly. That's not to say that there weren't any problems, but that simply problems weren't widespread or severe enough to cause any doubt about the winner of the election. AccuVote machines from Premier Election Systems (we warned you about the renamed ...

While many Americans tuned into those glum ol' news networks Tuesday night, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart dished out an entertaining -- if not absurd -- night of election coverage, as is shown in this clip on ValleyWag. With a finger always on the heartbeat of young America, Colbert ran a multi-layered digital media assault from his seat behind the news desk. At one point during the evening, ...

Newsweek revealed yesterday that computers at both the Obama and McCain campaigns were hacked by a "foreign entity" during the campaign. Though the intrusions -- which started last summer and continued through September and October -- were detected by the campaigns, they were initially thought to be a simple virus or phishing attack. The day following the hacks, the FBI and Secret Service ...