Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/25/america-needs-a-national-stand.html
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National standards? We need them, but it won’t happen in a country where more than a quarter of the electorate still sees “states’ rahts” as a synonym for “keep African-Americans down”.
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Start inking fingers.
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This isn’t an article in the Boston Globe. It’s a paid advertisement in the Boston Globe and the page states as much. This is basically a campaign ad.
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Good IDEA!!
Lets get Warren to write up “The Plan”. 
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We need a govt. that functions. As far as I can tell, every elected politician has completely abandoned his or her responsibility in favor of political points-scoring. Everyone claims he or she can’t get anything done on account of obstructionism from the other side. But in fact, I think we’re seeing optimization of the political system. Here’s an example of the kind of optimization I’m talking about:
Many years ago, a guy I knew briefly ran a porn site. It was low-tech. A much larger porn company was paying $0.18/click for people to advertise, and they would let anyone sign up. He created a site where you could download Pamela Anderson’s honeymoon video, and all you had to do was click 6 of his advertisements. Over time he recognized that he didn’t need to actually provide the videos, and he didn’t need to have a website. The clicks were the only thing that mattered. So he started spamming Usenet instead. Everyone that clicked his links got burned, his advertiser got burned, but he got paid anyway and eliminated all of his costs in the process.
We’re seeing that same kind of optimization in Congress and the Presidency. They no longer deliver any value, but they make more noise than ever. The noise is what gets them paid and keeps them in office.
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No fucking shit. Other countries have various states/regions take care of their own polling, counting ,etc but it’s all set to a national standard. This creates less room for shenanigans, but then again US isn’t meant to be representing everyone so why make elections fair, secure and transparent?
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That’s not an article, that’s an advert from the Boston Globe’s sponsored content department. How anyone who cares about the integrity of elections can participate in the ongoing muddling of news and advertisements is beyond me. Delete this trash.
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@Matt_Griffin, @PeteyG, if this is an advertisement, it’s a very subtle one. The link(s) seem to explain about cybersecurity threats, and how to protect against them. There is nothing overtly saying ‘this is who you contact’ or ‘this person will help you’ or ‘if you vote for this person, they will protect you’.
Welcome to BoingBoing!
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It is sponsored content - thus an advertisement. The fine print states that the news and editorial departments were not involved. So the advertiser gets to make it look like news, when in reality it is most likely subtly (or overtly) framing an issue or idea so that a different ad that the person sees later works better.
It’s why you can’t trust the “news” much anymore. A few organizations actually do the work - everyone else just links to it. And it’s all propped up with advertising, selling products and services that in many cases are causing the problems we see in the now much-less-reliable “news”.
Cory - you should know better than this.
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Oh, you mean like safety standards for airplanes? Purity standards for water? Legal standards for lenders?
Having rules on the books doesnt seem to mean much in the real world any more
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Thank you; in this case, I think my next question would be who, exactly, is doing the advertising?
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moon rocks /thread
I don’t think this deserves quite the side eye it’s getting. Yes, it’s sponsored, but it’s basically using an editorial as a campaign ad–the author is running for Congress. I don’t think they’re selling anything else but the candidate here.
It looks like the Boston Globe has been soliciting sponsored editorials from various people and vendors on cyber security issues; of course all of them want to sell you something, and in this case it’s Brianna Wu the candidate and her position on elections.
I’d personally be a lot happier if more campaign ads were editorials rather than the collection of sound bites and images that the average television ad is. I’m looking at you, Matt Bevins and all the “ILLEGAL ALIENS ARE KILLING US ALL” ads I saw a couple weeks ago when I was in Kentucky.
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The Republican Party will fight election security to the death. Preening the voter rolls, preventing early voting, de facto poll taxes, and similar techniques are the only way they can maintain a viable political party. They can’t win a fair fight any more, so they must cheat to survive.
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I agree. However, the constitution explicitly gives he power to conduct elections to the states and not the federal government. That’s been one of the biggest arguments against anything like this.
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