Meet the Technologists that Helped win Obama the Election

via theatlantic.com

The Obama campaign's technologists were tense and tired. It was game day and everything was going wrong.

Josh Thayer, the lead engineer of Narwhal, had just been informed that they'd lost another one of the services powering their software. That was bad: Narwhal was the code name for the data platform that underpinned the campaign and let it track voters and volunteers. If it broke, so would everything else.

They were talking with people at Amazon Web Services, but all they knew was that they had packet loss. Earlier that day, they lost their databases, their East Coast servers, and their memcache clusters. Thayer was ready to kill Nick Hatch, a DevOps engineer who was the official bearer of bad news. Another of their vendors, PalominoDB, was fixing databases, but needed to rebuild the replicas. It was going to take time, Hatch said. They didn't have time.

They'd been working 14-hour days, six or seven days a week, trying to reelect the president, and now everything had been broken at just the wrong time. It was like someone had written a Murphy's Law algorithm and deployed it at scale.

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How Technology Might Have Fared Under A President Romney

via readwrite.com

Some scientists like to argue that we are part of a multiverse, a collection of parallel realities that reflect the different choices we may have made instead of the ones we did make. This story explores the technological implications of one such world -- a world where Gov. Mitt Romney won the presidential election. For our take on what President Obama is likely to do about technology, see How Technology Will Fare In President Obama's Second Term

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How Technology Will Fare In President Obama's Second Term

via readwrite.com

The long 18-month U.S. presidential election is finally over, and after the dust has settled, President Barack Obama has been elected to serve a second term in the highest office in the land.

The President will have a lot on his plate: dealing with the so-called fiscal cliff; keeping economic growth on track; working with the ever-complicated world outside U.S. borders; and tackling the problems surrounding the U.S. education system for starters.

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Instagram Comes Of Age: Thank Hurricane Sandy & The Election

via readwrite.com

Instagram is all grown up. Not just because it now has a big, publicly-traded parent company. Nor am I referring to its unprecedentedly rapid user growth or new Web-based user profiles. In just the last few weeks, something significant has happened. Instagram became a mainstream social network, checked by everyday users during major news events and embraced by media outlets who previously weren't sure what to make of it.

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Inside America’s First ‘Social Election’

via socialtimes.com

Observers of the 2012 campaigns know that this cycle has been dubbed the first “social election,” with candidates up and down the ballot using social media to do everything from raise money to organize supporters.

CQ Researcher published a thorough examination of social media’s role in 2012 politics in an article entitled, “Social Media and Politics,” which is located behind their pay wall.

While many social networks were tried and tested this cycle, Vincent Harris, the digital director for Newt Gingrich’s campaign, calls Facebook the dominant media platform, the ‘800-lb. gorilla’ of the 2012 elections, because of the number of friends a user can obtain and its reach potential.

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How To Watch Tonight's Election Results Online

via readwrite.com

On November 6, 2012, the first post-PC U.S. presidential election will come to a close. Just like the primaries, conventions and debates, tonight's election returns will be obsessively and extensively live streamed and covered live online. For those relying on the Internet for their nail-biting date with democracy, there are more choices than anyone could possibly list.

Pretty much every modern news site in the United States (and many abroad) will be covering the results as they happen. That coverage will consist of a dizzying array of interactive maps, data visualizations, live video feeds, tweets, Instagram photos and good, old fashioned news articles. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are even pulling down their paywalls for the occasion.

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How To Vote

via gizmodo.com

The right to elect one's public representatives is the foundation upon which our democracy is built. So if you think Hurricane Sandy is going to stop Americans from choosing the next leader of the free world, demand a recount. Here's a look at the technology everyone over 18 can expect to find in a voting booth on November 6th, 2012.

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Presidential Election: Marketing 101

via viralblog.com

The candidates are sprinting through the finish line in an effort to win the most powerful job in the world.

This article isn’t about who will win the Presidency; nor, is it about who should win the Presidency. Rather, this is an article about what marketers can learn from those running for the Presidency.

So here’s the question: what can marketers learn from the campaigns of President Obama and Governor Romney? What can we take from their organizations to help ours?

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Fake Letters Inform Florida Residents They Can’t Vote

via newsfeed.time.com

For some Florida voters, last weekend started on a low note — literally.

Last Friday, letters that questioned registered voters’ eligibility began appearing in mailboxes across the state, NBC News reported. The letters, which resemble an authentic message from the Florida Division of Elections with a letterhead and contact information, notify recipients that the department has gleaned “information” concerning “citizenship status, bringing into question your eligibility as a registered voter.” The document also informs voters that they must complete a Voter Eligibility Form and return it to the Supervisor of Elections Office within 15 days or else they will surrender their eligibility to vote. Chris Cate, a spokesperson for the Florida Secretary of State’s Office, told NBC that as of Oct. 24, state officials have received reports of between 50 and 100 of these letters from individuals in at least 28 counties. Cate also told NPR that although voters in both parties have received the mailings, most of which were sent from Seattle, Republicans constitute the bulk of the addressees.

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Obama vs. Romney: The Social Showdown

via mashable.com

With Newt Gingrich suspending his campaign today, Mitt Romney will finally be considered the presumptive Republican nominee. Only one person stands between him and the White House: President Barack Obama.

The two will wage electoral war from now until November, but how do their social profiles compare?

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'Obama Vs. Romney' Could End Up Being A Lot Like 'Mac Vs. PC'

via businessinsider.com

The juxtaposition between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama couldn’t have been starker.

Romney delivered a solid, if perfunctory, victory speech. Later in the night, President Obama appeared on Jimmy Fallon.

One one hand, this was not remarkable. Even Richard Nixon appeared on “Laugh In.” And Romney was on the ballot in five states — of course he was going to deliver a political speech.

But nothing happens in politics by accident. Obama didn’t have to go on Fallon Tuesday night. And so, perhaps the dichotomy can serve as a signal — a sort of microcosm — of the coming general election.

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Poll: Americans, 2-1, Fear Obama's Reelection

via usnews.com

When it comes to how Americans view President Obama going into the new year, there appears to be very little spirit of Auld Lang Syne. Instead, according to the new Washington Whispers poll, many voters aren't forgetting what they dislike about Obama and want him out of office.

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Researchers hack e-voting machine, similar to 2012 Election Day machines

via digitaltrends.com

A group of American computer science and security experts have performed a hack on an e-voting machine similar to ones which will be used on Election Day in 2012.

Voting machines that could be used by up to a quarter of the US electorate on Election Day next year can be hacked, says a group of computer science and security experts at the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. In fact, they’re not only saying it. They’ve done it.

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Social media a powerful election tool but no match for door knocking: experts

via theglobeandmail.com

Despite the importance of social media in the Ontario election campaign, tweeting will never replace door knocking, and campaigns will still be won and lost offline, politicians and experts say.

They say social media might add a new element to elections, but don't supersede traditional methods of winning over voters.

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How Obama Won The Last Election - Revealing Video

via youtube.com

Obama's campaign was truly genius, and this coming from a die-hard conservative. He ran keeping in mind the mindset of the average voter, and took advantage of every opportunity to become president. Despite this, did the American people ask what they could do for their country, or what their country could do for them?

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Rick Perry Is Ready to Run for President!? - I'd vote for him

via swampland.time.com

Rick Perry is primed to announce his bid for the Republican presidential nomination on Saturday in South Carolina. TIME‘s Mark Halperin caught up with the Texas governor in Austin and asked him about his feelings on a White House run, his conservative credentials and his rumored rocky relationship with the Bushes. Lightly edited highlights from their conversation follow:

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