7 ms·

> Nothing came of Paul Graham’s plan for tech to stop Donald Trump, but Altman, after brooding about Trump for months, recently announced a nonpartisan project,

by pdog 10y ago

> Nothing came of Paul Graham’s plan for tech to stop Donald Trump, but Altman, after brooding about Trump for months, recently announced a nonpartisan project, called VotePlz, aimed at getting out the youth vote. Looking at the election as a tech problem—what’s the least code with the most payoff?—Altman and his three co-founders concentrated on helping young people in nine swing states to register, by providing them with registration forms and stamps. Doesn't this confirm that VotePlz is mostly just a smokescreen to "get-out-the-vote" for a favored candidate?

malmsteen 10y ago
Yes it's implied, but the point of the sentence is that altman's approach is more effective than graham..
jedberg 10y ago
Get out the vote campaigns are always in favor of Democrats, because the young and poor tend to be the ones who don't vote and tend to vote Democrat. Back in the 90s MTV had "Rock the Vote" (actually it was a progressive non-profit who partnered with MTV) and their goal was the same.
- pdog 10y ago
  > Get out the vote campaigns are always in favor of Democrats What? This is only true if you believe that get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operations are exclusive to Democrats.
  - daveguy 10y ago
    That should have read: Non-targeted get out the vote campaigns are always in favor of Democrats.
    - rat87 10y ago
      Still wrong there are Republicans not registered / not voting. Its just a different demographic target.
- rat87 10y ago
  Get out the vote campaigns can be broad and general or can be targeted at voters likely to vote for your candidate/issue(either right or left). As long as you're not discouraging the occasional person voting for the other side from registering I don't see anything wrong with that.
- nostrademons 10y ago
  Interestingly, 538 ran a piece recently that implies that that's not the case this election, and that Trump actually has far more upside from unregistered voters than Clinton does: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/missing-white-voters-could-elect-trump-but-first-they-need-to-register/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/missing-white-voters-cou... The summary is that by far the largest unregistered cohort is those who are young, poor, and uneducated. And this election, the poor and uneducated group is largely in Trump's camp, while in past elections they may have split roughly evenly between Republicans and Democrats depending on other issues. The other interesting thing is that the Trump campaign has done fairly little with voter registration drives, perhaps because of this image of it largely helping Democrats. Would be an interesting example of how hewing to common wisdom rather than data can end up hurting a candidate, if 538's analysis is true.
  - jedberg 10y ago
    This is fascinating. And I definitely trust data more than common wisdom. Good thing for the Democrats that Trump doesn't. :)
    - tomcam 10y ago
      Citation?
      - nostrademons 10y ago
        About the missing Trump voters or about the Trump campaign not paying attention to data? I gave a citation for the former above - as for the latter, well, the evidence is contradictory. Trump said in May that he considers big data overrated [1][2], though he reversed himself in August [3]. The tricky part about using data is that it takes time to build an effective data operation. It takes time to collect the data, it takes time to analyze it, and then you need a large ground organizational effort to actually turn that data into votes. The last day for voter registration in most swing states is Oct 11, barely a week away. Even if he's recently had a change of heart, it's likely too late to do anything effective. [1] http://elections.ap.org/content/ap-interview-trump-says-big-rallies-his-key-campaign-weapon http://elections.ap.org/content/ap-interview-trump-says-big-... [2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-big-data-gamble-1469395312 http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-big-data-gamble-146939531... [3] https://www.wired.com/2016/08/trump-cambridge-analytica/ https://www.wired.com/2016/08/trump-cambridge-analytica/
enraged_camel 10y ago
It's not specific to VotePlz. In swing states, high voter turnouts have always favored Democratic candidates.
sulam 10y ago
You could also say that laws that are aimed at reducing voter fraud (from zero) are a smokescreen for a favored candidate/party, because they tend to reduce voting among younger people (less likely to vote in a place that matches their home address) and the poor (less likely to have various types of identification, most importantly a driver's license). There are also people trying to pass laws to reduce the number of locations you can vote (hurts the working poor's ability to vote), the hours polling places are open (ibid), and reducing weekend polling for primaries (ibid). State agencies are also trying to pass laws that reduce or eliminate places you can register to vote, or change the rules regarding how long you have to register before you can vote. They also have laws on the books or are trying to pass laws that allow them more flexibility to not count your vote after you've cast it, and in many cases you have little to no ability to find out if your vote was actually tallied. IOW, the ability to vote is highly contested. Pressure in the opposite direction is probably necessary if we want to consider ourselves a representative democracy.
- Idontagree 10y ago
  How do you get from reducing voter fraud to it being a bad thing for elections. If the problem is that some basic form of government I.D. is hard to come by then fix that, not make it so anyone can walk in and vote. The other stuff about making polling places close early and stuff, I agree, is riduculous, but I don't see how requiring proper identification is a bad thing.
  - usefulcat 10y ago
    As I understand it, in many (most?) places voter fraud was already pretty rare. If that's the case, then it's not hard to see how a "solution" to the problem of voter fraud could actually prevent more legitimate votes than illegitimate votes simply by making things slightly more difficult for some or all legitimate voters.
    - Idontagree 10y ago
      Pretty rare? Ok, it's pretty rare that people try my door handle at night, but I'm still not going to leave it unlocked. I think voting is a pretty serious issue, if we're meant to take to it seriously.
dang 10y ago
We've marked this subthread off topic since it veered into general politics.

by pdog 10y ago

malmsteen 10y ago

Yes it's implied, but the point of the sentence is that altman's approach is more effective than graham..

jedberg 10y ago

Get out the vote campaigns are always in favor of Democrats, because the young and poor tend to be the ones who don't vote and tend to vote Democrat. Back in the 90s MTV had "Rock the Vote" (actually it was a progressive non-profit who partnered with MTV) and their goal was the same.

pdog 10y ago
> Get out the vote campaigns are always in favor of Democrats What? This is only true if you believe that get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operations are exclusive to Democrats.
- daveguy 10y ago
  That should have read: Non-targeted get out the vote campaigns are always in favor of Democrats.
  - rat87 10y ago
    Still wrong there are Republicans not registered / not voting. Its just a different demographic target.
rat87 10y ago
Get out the vote campaigns can be broad and general or can be targeted at voters likely to vote for your candidate/issue(either right or left). As long as you're not discouraging the occasional person voting for the other side from registering I don't see anything wrong with that.
nostrademons 10y ago
Interestingly, 538 ran a piece recently that implies that that's not the case this election, and that Trump actually has far more upside from unregistered voters than Clinton does: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/missing-white-voters-could-elect-trump-but-first-they-need-to-register/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/missing-white-voters-cou... The summary is that by far the largest unregistered cohort is those who are young, poor, and uneducated. And this election, the poor and uneducated group is largely in Trump's camp, while in past elections they may have split roughly evenly between Republicans and Democrats depending on other issues. The other interesting thing is that the Trump campaign has done fairly little with voter registration drives, perhaps because of this image of it largely helping Democrats. Would be an interesting example of how hewing to common wisdom rather than data can end up hurting a candidate, if 538's analysis is true.
- jedberg 10y ago
  This is fascinating. And I definitely trust data more than common wisdom. Good thing for the Democrats that Trump doesn't. :)
  - tomcam 10y ago
    Citation?
    - nostrademons 10y ago
      About the missing Trump voters or about the Trump campaign not paying attention to data? I gave a citation for the former above - as for the latter, well, the evidence is contradictory. Trump said in May that he considers big data overrated [1][2], though he reversed himself in August [3]. The tricky part about using data is that it takes time to build an effective data operation. It takes time to collect the data, it takes time to analyze it, and then you need a large ground organizational effort to actually turn that data into votes. The last day for voter registration in most swing states is Oct 11, barely a week away. Even if he's recently had a change of heart, it's likely too late to do anything effective. [1] http://elections.ap.org/content/ap-interview-trump-says-big-rallies-his-key-campaign-weapon http://elections.ap.org/content/ap-interview-trump-says-big-... [2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-big-data-gamble-1469395312 http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-big-data-gamble-146939531... [3] https://www.wired.com/2016/08/trump-cambridge-analytica/ https://www.wired.com/2016/08/trump-cambridge-analytica/

enraged_camel 10y ago

It's not specific to VotePlz. In swing states, high voter turnouts have always favored Democratic candidates.

sulam 10y ago

You could also say that laws that are aimed at reducing voter fraud (from zero) are a smokescreen for a favored candidate/party, because they tend to reduce voting among younger people (less likely to vote in a place that matches their home address) and the poor (less likely to have various types of identification, most importantly a driver's license). There are also people trying to pass laws to reduce the number of locations you can vote (hurts the working poor's ability to vote), the hours polling places are open (ibid), and reducing weekend polling for primaries (ibid). State agencies are also trying to pass laws that reduce or eliminate places you can register to vote, or change the rules regarding how long you have to register before you can vote. They also have laws on the books or are trying to pass laws that allow them more flexibility to not count your vote after you've cast it, and in many cases you have little to no ability to find out if your vote was actually tallied. IOW, the ability to vote is highly contested. Pressure in the opposite direction is probably necessary if we want to consider ourselves a representative democracy.

Idontagree 10y ago
How do you get from reducing voter fraud to it being a bad thing for elections. If the problem is that some basic form of government I.D. is hard to come by then fix that, not make it so anyone can walk in and vote. The other stuff about making polling places close early and stuff, I agree, is riduculous, but I don't see how requiring proper identification is a bad thing.
- usefulcat 10y ago
  As I understand it, in many (most?) places voter fraud was already pretty rare. If that's the case, then it's not hard to see how a "solution" to the problem of voter fraud could actually prevent more legitimate votes than illegitimate votes simply by making things slightly more difficult for some or all legitimate voters.
  - Idontagree 10y ago
    Pretty rare? Ok, it's pretty rare that people try my door handle at night, but I'm still not going to leave it unlocked. I think voting is a pretty serious issue, if we're meant to take to it seriously.

dang 10y ago

We've marked this subthread off topic since it veered into general politics.