Election 2000: The morning after

It’s the day after the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in the United States and the win­ner is… either Bush or Gore. The inter­est­ing thing in this is that part of the rea­son we have reached this out­come is that polling booth in the United States are still using anti­quated tech­nol­ogy. In Florida, the state that will decide who gets the elec­tion, the vot­ing is done on punch cards.

For years to come, this elec­tion will be scru­ti­nized and peo­ple will ask ques­tions as to what went wrong. Whether Bush or Gore wins, there will be about half of the peo­ple look­ing for some sort of reform. In the new age of com­put­ing, one is left to won­der whether there will be a change in the way elec­tion booth are shaped.

Using tech­nol­ogy could solve one of the prob­lems: if the vot­ing booth were more com­put­er­ized, we might know who the next pres­i­dent is by now. Using basic client server tech­nol­ogy, this could eas­ily be changed. If the vot­ing booth were to hold dumb ter­mi­nals with touch screens con­nected to a server at every loca­tion, the servers could be brought in and the votes quickly tabulated.

Other net-related votes

How­ever, a num­ber of other crit­i­cal votes were decided last night.

New Jer­sey votes decided to vote in favor of a pro­posal to post pic­tures, names, and addresses of sex­ual offend­ers on the Inter­net. This is an amend­ment to the New Jer­sey con­sti­tu­tion but may be con­tested in court by pri­vacy groups who believe that this is infring­ing on the civil rights of those sex offenders.

In San Fran­cisco, propo­si­tion K, which would have put zon­ing lim­its on dot com expan­sion, did not pass. But propo­si­tion L, which works along the same lines, did. Sim­i­lar propo­si­tions in Ari­zona (Propo­si­tion 202) and Col­orado (Amend­ment 24) were defeated by voters.

In Wash­ing­ton, the bat­tle between Slade Gor­don (often called the Microsoft Sen­a­tor) and for­mer Real Net­works exec­u­tive Maria Cantwell is a draw right now, with polls too close to call until next week. This is one to watch as it could influ­ence the way the DOJ/Microsoft law­suit goes.

This year was also one when a lot of big name tech lead­ers got involved in pol­i­tics. In Cal­i­for­nia, propo­si­tion 38 on school vouch­ers was defeated in spite of DFJ founder Tim Draper. Propo­si­tion 39 on low­er­ing the elec­toral thresh­old for school fund­ing was sup­ported by Kleiner-Perkins’ John Doerr, passed with a clear mar­gin. In Texas, the “Light Rail Ini­tia­tive,” which was sup­ported by Ross Gar­ber (founder of Vignette), Tom Mered­ith (Dell Ven­tures), John Thorn­ton (Austin Ven­tures), Steve Paper­mas­ter (CEO of Agillion.com), and Jan Lin­de­low (CEO of Tivoli Sys­tems) was defeated by vot­ers. Over­all, one can say that the tech indus­try still has a lot to learn about win­ning elections.

Cov­er­age

This was the Internet’s big chance to shine in terms of report­ing results and all that can be said about it is maybe next time. The net proved as pow­er­less as TV in pre­dict­ing a win­ner. While a lot of data was given by all the lead­ing sites, none were able to pre­dict the out­come any bet­ter than their TV counterparts.

Inter­est­ingly, though, the web opened up a new issue: Early release of exit polls results. Drudge Report and Inside.com also broke rank with the rest of the media by post­ing early exit poll reports before the polls were closed.

Also of inter­est was how the dif­fer­ent web site man­aged the large amount of traf­fic they received. All and all, most of them did a fair job. While CNN.com and ABCnews.com man­aged to hold on prop­erly, sites like MSNBC, NYtimes.com and USAtoday.com failed the vol­ume test: their sites were slow and, at times, sim­ply did not respond. Hope­fully, those sites will learn their les­son and gear up bet­ter for the next election.

The next cou­ple of days are going to be inter­est­ing in terms of traf­fic. A lot of peo­ple are back at work and will prob­a­bly check in often on the web to get an idea of who the next pres­i­dent is. Now the ques­tion remains as to whether the Florida’s Divi­sion of Elec­tion Web site will man­age to sur­vive the flow of traf­fic it will get.

All and all, this is a fas­ci­nat­ing story and it’s good for the web as it will keep peo­ple glued to web sites and increase traf­fic in gen­eral. We’ve come a long way as a medium and if there’s any­thing that we’re sure of right now, it’s that the web has become a viable medium for news.