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Should a company's employees/CEO have to be apolitical? I'd be surprised if there is such a company where none of its employees are involved in politics in any

Should a company's employees/CEO have to be apolitical? I'd be surprised if there is such a company where none of its employees are involved in politics in any way. Especially if its a company whose sole purpose is developing software for a political party.

jedberg 7y ago
They don't have to be, but much like with insider trading rules, it's better to avoid even the appearance of a possible conflict.
allovernow 7y ago
No, but until recently it was professional to keep your politics private and, more importantly, when there are inconsistencies disproportionately favoring an otherwise less popular candidate, public support from employees and especially the CEO, in conjunction with a money trail, these personal indicators of bias become relevant for justification of suspicion.
- jmull 7y ago
  How is this even helping Buttigieg? There doesn’t seem to be any indication this was anything but a regular screwup. Throwing around suggestions of a vague conspiracy looks unwarranted. You’re suggesting that to avoid suspicion companies providing services to political campaigns must be apolitical and to have never previously provided services to a candidate in the race or any previous opponent of a candidate in the race. How could that even be possible?
  - allovernow 7y ago
    No, I'm saying those in support of ostensibly neutral third parties should not be making tweets indicating strong bias for one of the parties they are charged with treating neutrally. Is it really so difficult to keep your public persona neutral and vanilla if you're a damn CEO? Wasn't this standard practice until recently? What, because Trump vomits on Twitter 24/7 everyone else needs to as well?
    - jmull 7y ago
      You think it’s OK for CEOs of companies providing services to political campaigns to have political opinions as long as they keep them secret? I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, so here’s your chance: any particular reason we shouldn’t dismiss you as not being serious?
      - allovernow 7y ago
        >You think it’s OK for CEOs of companies providing services to political campaigns to have political opinions as long as they keep them secret? No, I think it's questionable when a CEO publicly discloses a strong political bias, receives private funds from the personally favored candidate, has cordial photos with the candidate at social events, and then is hired by the DNC and charged with being unbiased in a secret, electronically controlled ballot. There are tens of millions of dollars changing hands in the ramp up to the election. This is not a complex scheme involving millions of mouths to keep shut and olympic mental gymnastics to justify. A handful of politically leaning and/or paid off devs add a package to the code and you have whatever results you want. Ask yourself, do you really think corruption only exists outside of the United States? The bottom line is there are many discrepancies which happen to align toward a possibly calculated malicious intent. This feels like a "conspiracy theory" because there are so many tenuously linked components and no hard proof - but that's how any real life unfolding event looks until people have poured over it for months post facto and sorted through everything. In any case what I'm saying is that there's plenty of incompetence and bias here to at least be prudently suspicious.
        anarazel 7y ago
        > charged with being unbiased in a secret, electronically controlled ballot. The Iowa Caucuses are neither secret (like absurdly not) nor electronic?
  - kyrieeschaton 7y ago
    What? In the case of the hypothesis, he gets more delegates. He also gets to take them from the person he is screwing (likely Sanders). Both of those immediate rewards have their own payoffs down the line (eg, in Buttigieg receiving an appointment to a grateful Warren administration or what have you) even if he does not win. The idea that the Democratic nominating process would be rigged is not ipso facto crazy given that it is publicly acknowledged to have actually happened last election cycle.
    - jmull 7y ago
      Well, no. The problem with the app is delaying the result not changing it. There’s a paper trail of everything and the app can’t change it. Maybe you can provide more details of your hypothesis, but what you have so far doesn’t make sense.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    How is this even helping Buttigieg? The count has been frozen at "62%" for six hours now. That just happens to be the first/only level at which "Mayor Pete" had a delegate lead over Bernie, even though Bernie still leads the popular vote. Several days from now, when the count ticks up to 100%, Bernie will lead both measures by large margins. Still, in the meantime, the corporate media can pretend like the Mayor is ahead. They know he's going to bomb in SC worse than Biden bombed in Iowa, but they're hoping that somehow they can get him to "Super Tuesday" when the other Mayor can take over for him due to his 9-figure ad spend. Of course, the idea that the perfect candidate to beat a vain old NY rich guy is another vain old NY rich guy who also banned soft drinks the last time he held elected office is risible, but they don't care about that. The point is to ratfuck any candidate who might plausibly do fewer stupid wars.
    - jmull 7y ago
      But your scenario doesn’t actually help Buttigieg. Also the app people can’t control the timing of the manual reporting, so there would somehow be a completely new element of the conspiracy. And you’re switching from a conspiracy orchestrated by Buttigieg to one orchestrated by the corporate media, Bloomberg, and/or the industrial military complex.
      - jessaustin 7y ago
        Buttigieg is 38 years old. His previous jobs were with McKinsey and "military intelligence" and his previous election total was 8,000 votes. He isn't trying to win the presidency. Iowa itself is a tiny state with a tiny number of convention delegates. The whole point of Iowa is that the winner gets some momentum. In this case, the winner won't get any momentum. That's the point. Some people like to bore us with the "once is a coincidence" maxim. Some of them might like to pretend that this caucus is "once" and we'll have to wait a week or two to get upset about the ratfucking. Normal voters can remember four years ago, however, and this isn't even just the fourth time the national "Democratic" apparatus has ratfucked Bernie.
    - matchbok 7y ago
      Sanders does poorly (because most people don't like him and and lost last time) "Must be a conspiracy!!!"
dv_dt 7y ago
If you're in the vote counting business, it's a conflict of interest to also be in the vote making business for candidates.
- asdff 7y ago
  Good thing they are in the tally business and not the counting business, then. What is the difference, you might ask? One failed last night while the other one is occurring right now.
  - dv_dt 7y ago
    I'm not really feeling the difference between counting and tallying, but even keeping that distinction, it still sounds to me like they're mostly not in the tally business for lack of performance. If they had performed, it would still be a conflict of interest, just one none of us would likely have heard about. I feel that doesn't make anything better.
redisman 7y ago
It's easy to find a connection (left-leaning-politics-tech is a small network) and it makes for juicy conspiracy headlines.
shevek_ 7y ago
It is not a controversial statement to say that an election shouldn't be run with closed software made by a private company with financial, personal, and professional ties to one of the candidates. If something like this happened elsewhere in the world the US would use it as pretext for intervention.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  Okay, then, my aunt's church group elected a treasurer using that website that used some online poll type thing with a password. I'm sure that residents of Leicestershire are quaking in their wellies awaiting the inevitable arrival of the 101st Airborne.

jedberg 7y ago

They don't have to be, but much like with insider trading rules, it's better to avoid even the appearance of a possible conflict.

allovernow 7y ago

No, but until recently it was professional to keep your politics private and, more importantly, when there are inconsistencies disproportionately favoring an otherwise less popular candidate, public support from employees and especially the CEO, in conjunction with a money trail, these personal indicators of bias become relevant for justification of suspicion.

jmull 7y ago
How is this even helping Buttigieg? There doesn’t seem to be any indication this was anything but a regular screwup. Throwing around suggestions of a vague conspiracy looks unwarranted. You’re suggesting that to avoid suspicion companies providing services to political campaigns must be apolitical and to have never previously provided services to a candidate in the race or any previous opponent of a candidate in the race. How could that even be possible?
- allovernow 7y ago
  No, I'm saying those in support of ostensibly neutral third parties should not be making tweets indicating strong bias for one of the parties they are charged with treating neutrally. Is it really so difficult to keep your public persona neutral and vanilla if you're a damn CEO? Wasn't this standard practice until recently? What, because Trump vomits on Twitter 24/7 everyone else needs to as well?
  - jmull 7y ago
    You think it’s OK for CEOs of companies providing services to political campaigns to have political opinions as long as they keep them secret? I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, so here’s your chance: any particular reason we shouldn’t dismiss you as not being serious?
    - allovernow 7y ago
      >You think it’s OK for CEOs of companies providing services to political campaigns to have political opinions as long as they keep them secret? No, I think it's questionable when a CEO publicly discloses a strong political bias, receives private funds from the personally favored candidate, has cordial photos with the candidate at social events, and then is hired by the DNC and charged with being unbiased in a secret, electronically controlled ballot. There are tens of millions of dollars changing hands in the ramp up to the election. This is not a complex scheme involving millions of mouths to keep shut and olympic mental gymnastics to justify. A handful of politically leaning and/or paid off devs add a package to the code and you have whatever results you want. Ask yourself, do you really think corruption only exists outside of the United States? The bottom line is there are many discrepancies which happen to align toward a possibly calculated malicious intent. This feels like a "conspiracy theory" because there are so many tenuously linked components and no hard proof - but that's how any real life unfolding event looks until people have poured over it for months post facto and sorted through everything. In any case what I'm saying is that there's plenty of incompetence and bias here to at least be prudently suspicious.
      - anarazel 7y ago
        > charged with being unbiased in a secret, electronically controlled ballot. The Iowa Caucuses are neither secret (like absurdly not) nor electronic?
- kyrieeschaton 7y ago
  What? In the case of the hypothesis, he gets more delegates. He also gets to take them from the person he is screwing (likely Sanders). Both of those immediate rewards have their own payoffs down the line (eg, in Buttigieg receiving an appointment to a grateful Warren administration or what have you) even if he does not win. The idea that the Democratic nominating process would be rigged is not ipso facto crazy given that it is publicly acknowledged to have actually happened last election cycle.
  - jmull 7y ago
    Well, no. The problem with the app is delaying the result not changing it. There’s a paper trail of everything and the app can’t change it. Maybe you can provide more details of your hypothesis, but what you have so far doesn’t make sense.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  How is this even helping Buttigieg? The count has been frozen at "62%" for six hours now. That just happens to be the first/only level at which "Mayor Pete" had a delegate lead over Bernie, even though Bernie still leads the popular vote. Several days from now, when the count ticks up to 100%, Bernie will lead both measures by large margins. Still, in the meantime, the corporate media can pretend like the Mayor is ahead. They know he's going to bomb in SC worse than Biden bombed in Iowa, but they're hoping that somehow they can get him to "Super Tuesday" when the other Mayor can take over for him due to his 9-figure ad spend. Of course, the idea that the perfect candidate to beat a vain old NY rich guy is another vain old NY rich guy who also banned soft drinks the last time he held elected office is risible, but they don't care about that. The point is to ratfuck any candidate who might plausibly do fewer stupid wars.
  - jmull 7y ago
    But your scenario doesn’t actually help Buttigieg. Also the app people can’t control the timing of the manual reporting, so there would somehow be a completely new element of the conspiracy. And you’re switching from a conspiracy orchestrated by Buttigieg to one orchestrated by the corporate media, Bloomberg, and/or the industrial military complex.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      Buttigieg is 38 years old. His previous jobs were with McKinsey and "military intelligence" and his previous election total was 8,000 votes. He isn't trying to win the presidency. Iowa itself is a tiny state with a tiny number of convention delegates. The whole point of Iowa is that the winner gets some momentum. In this case, the winner won't get any momentum. That's the point. Some people like to bore us with the "once is a coincidence" maxim. Some of them might like to pretend that this caucus is "once" and we'll have to wait a week or two to get upset about the ratfucking. Normal voters can remember four years ago, however, and this isn't even just the fourth time the national "Democratic" apparatus has ratfucked Bernie.
  - matchbok 7y ago
    Sanders does poorly (because most people don't like him and and lost last time) "Must be a conspiracy!!!"

dv_dt 7y ago

If you're in the vote counting business, it's a conflict of interest to also be in the vote making business for candidates.

asdff 7y ago
Good thing they are in the tally business and not the counting business, then. What is the difference, you might ask? One failed last night while the other one is occurring right now.
- dv_dt 7y ago
  I'm not really feeling the difference between counting and tallying, but even keeping that distinction, it still sounds to me like they're mostly not in the tally business for lack of performance. If they had performed, it would still be a conflict of interest, just one none of us would likely have heard about. I feel that doesn't make anything better.

redisman 7y ago

It's easy to find a connection (left-leaning-politics-tech is a small network) and it makes for juicy conspiracy headlines.

shevek_ 7y ago

It is not a controversial statement to say that an election shouldn't be run with closed software made by a private company with financial, personal, and professional ties to one of the candidates. If something like this happened elsewhere in the world the US would use it as pretext for intervention.

scarejunba 7y ago
Okay, then, my aunt's church group elected a treasurer using that website that used some online poll type thing with a password. I'm sure that residents of Leicestershire are quaking in their wellies awaiting the inevitable arrival of the 101st Airborne.