Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Google Has an Eye to Help Us Sort Out Campaign Noise

Second, there are links to news, web and photo searches for candidates for the U.S. House and Senate races on November 7. Now, I think a squirrel could figure out which way to go on our presidential candidates and political parties. But an educated vote does require some Google searching, especially when candidates try so hard to blur the differences.

Google has integrated campaign and candidate information into Google Earth. Now contrary to the fellow that wrote the piece above (Rock the Vote Director) I am not all for easy online voter registration, online voting and "authoritative" voting guides. I am opposed to these ideas because the American populace has demonstrated manifest apathy in figuring out what "right" look like (by right I mean moral, ethical and philosophical right).

However, considering that things are what they are, we live in the era of sound bites and slick political marketing campaigns I suppose I am all for Google's effort to catalog, index and present in a easily accessible way all information available on candidates and their positions.

My fear is that this index will become authoritative - "my Google search says this guy is a _____ (insert whatever)" and that becomes fact. Campaigns will move their smear campaigns to the Internet (they already have) and use spam and googlebombing techniques to push their agendas - sometimes to the exclusion of the truth. This new Google service, if abused like so many other services, may hurt rather than help our democratic republic.

There is great convenience to all of this but also great danger - apathetic voters can now in a few clicks register to vote, go to an authority site and figure out who to vote for and probably soon actually vote - all without really giving the process thought or deliberation.

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