Allison Fine's blog
Allison Fine, 10/03/2008 - 10:28am

Enormous efforts have been made by campaigns and public interest groups to register people to vote on November 4th. According to the Election Assistance Commission more than 2 million poll workers will be working at over 200,000 polling places this election. Unfortunately, what these new voters don’t know is that just registering to vote may not ensure that they are able to vote on Election Day or that their vote will be counted.

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Allison Fine, 04/22/2008 - 3:48pm

There will be a lot going on in Pennsylvania today with the death match between Obama and Clinton coming down to the wire. A huge turnout and lots of new voters are expected which is always worrisome in large states like PA with lots of different municipalities (the Pittsburgh area has the largest number of unique municipalities in one county, Alleghany, in the country) all with their own machinery and rules. There will be a lot of commentary on who voted for whom, but there is another, smaller story worth watching, and that is what happens to the machinery tomorrow.

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Allison Fine, 03/31/2008 - 1:20pm

Voting, in some form or another, is on the minds and screens of Americans everywhere during this election year. As everyone knows it’s American Idol season and millions of Americans are voting by phone and text messaging for their favorites. However, in spite of the great interest in and high turnout for the presidential primaries on the Democratic side, the voting system -- the mechanics that should allow for an easy and secure one-person-one-vote process, a system that the government has invested $4 billion since the debacle in 2000 -- continues to be broken.

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Allison Fine, 03/31/2008 - 12:55pm

Al Gore just announced a new campaign to $300 million climate change campaign. It’s a very slick website called We Can Solve the Climate Crisis, or We for Short.

At the risk of being totally un-PC for We, I have some problems here (and I’m not talking about the shock of seeing the phrase, “Nobel laureate former Vice President Al Gore” — didn’t I just know him as boring Al?).

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Allison Fine, 02/12/2008 - 4:03pm

It’s like the premise of a science fiction novel; what would happen if all of your friends disappeared in an instant? It would be like a neutron bomb that killed everyone around you, except you, and there you were standing all alone. Derek Blackadder had an experience like this on Facebook several weeks ago

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Allison Fine, 01/31/2008 - 4:07pm

Do you know which sector is the tenth largest biggest business sector in the country as measured by its revenue and number of employees? It’s the nonprofit sector, a sprawling, incongruous group of causes, agencies, universities and hospitals linked together mainly by the tax code that gives them all exempt status. And until now, it would have seemed implausible that nonprofits and presidential politics would go hand-in hand.

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Allison Fine, 01/14/2008 - 3:54pm

Just as people, particularly young voters, are beginning to pay attention to the presidential race, 14 states have already closed their voter registration with another 5 set to do so within the next week!

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Allison Fine, 12/18/2007 - 11:39am

As we race into the most compact primary schedule ever and the top two candidates for the Democrats continue to dominate the polls, I’ve realized that campaigns are a lot like ball games: the key ingredient that makes them both so much fun to watch is the tiniest possibility that an underdog can win. Therefore, with the help of a number of New Hampshire-ites, I’ve designed a blueprint for victory for John Edwards that isn’t about squeezing the very last dime out of bundlers and other donors but leveraging the commerce of the 21st century: social networks. Here’s your Win Free or Die in New Hampshire Blueprint strategy courtesy of me — no charge.

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Allison Fine, 05/18/2007 - 3:40pm

Just finished my session on Building Powerful Online Communities: Best Practices. The panelists included me, Ian Bogost talking about gaming, Matt Lewis of Townhall.com, James Rucker of ColorofChange and Heather Holdridge of Care2 who served as our moderator.

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Allison Fine, 05/18/2007 - 11:14am

Few thoughts from the hallway outside the main hall here at PDF:

Dana Boyd and Matt Stoller rock.

No line at the ladies room - I love tech conferences!

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