The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) began from "a proposal to develop a pilot project in one county in California" and has spawned the voter verifiable, open-source
Electronic Voting Machine project:

Privacy isn't always a matter of unprotected data or unconstitutional seizures.

The A.C.L.U. is facing new scrutiny for compiling public data about its donors' affiliations. Is there a penumbra of privacy around the lives we live publically, but somewhat facelessly?

In a December article about "dating blogs," author and constitutional scholar Jeff Rosen talks about the growing need for "new social conventions to resurrect the boundaries between public and private interactions."

As technology makes the traces our actions more visible, a new category of data is emerging: the "ripples" we leave behind.

Is this information fair game? Like the stories ex-girlfriends tell about contestants on reality TV shows?

Or do we need new "quarantine"-style rules around who can collect our ripples, and what they can do with them?

Initial response from the A.C.L.U.

The role of blogs and other forms of online citizen's media in spreading first-hand accounts of the tsunami disaster and in mobilizing relief aid has been phenomenal. Bloggers deserve to pat themselves handily on the back.

Bloggers rock. OK. Now what?

Can this new model of citizen-journalism and aid coordination be extended to disasters and human tragedies that don’t get so much mainstream media attention?

What can we do for Darfur, other victims of war and famine in Africa, and AIDS victims?

What can we do for the victims of yearly natural disasters - earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, typhoons, doughts, etc. - for whom U.N. agencies have such trouble raising money?

How can we help organizations like Doctors Without Borders bring aid every day to the millions around the world in danger of dying deaths every bit as tragic as the tsunami victims?

"Undoing Industrial Revolution on Political Organizing," recently posted on Marty Kearns' blog, Network-Centric Advocacy, builds on points from Jakob Nielsen's post .

[The organizational forms of organization fostered by the Industrial Revolution are] a haunting legacy. Big groups are now effectively marginalized and a bulk of resources and talent are locking into industrial age advocacy operations. The writing is on the wall. The movement slowly moved away from a distributed public and into the hands of professional advocates. The challenge continues to be "feeding the beast" of industrialized advocacy which is driving resources away from the edges into the centralized leadership.

He goes into more detail about each point in his post but here are the highlights...

Convio just unveiled a tool that automates messages to members of advocacy organizations based on their representatives' voting records. According to the press release, the software services company's "Advocacy Center" houses and tracks data on past and pending House and Senate votes including amendments that could block passage.

So, say Citizens Against Government Waste (a Convio client) wants to get the word out about all the pork padding a pending farm subsidy bill. The group can automatically customize site content or email newsletters to feature details on the fat that Joe Citizen's Congressman wants to funnel through the legislation to his favorite hometown butcher.

And I'm still waiting for my local paper to cover my Congressman's votes....

Could the JibJab hype actually have any real bearing on politics or public policy? A new animation from Consumers Union for its Prescription for Change campaign against big pharma could be a symptom of the potential impact of silly cartoons on political activism.

As was apparent at last week's Politics Online Conference in DC, the popular animated poli-celeb spoofs created by the accidentally famous JibJab Studios, has had a lot of folks in the poltical campaign arena...uh...jibber-jabbering (couldn't resist). I'll admit, every time I hear somebody refer to their big viral Web hit, "This Land," in the context of political campaigning, I can't help but roll my eyes. Even at the PO Conference, a panel moderator asked whether humorous Web animations will be the future of political advertising.

Wha? It wasn't the political content that spurred the eruptive viral response to the cartoon as much as it was its dismissal of the tense, politically-charged pre-election atmosphere. More important, it was the humor (not to mention the accompaniment of a recognizable All-American ditty) that really brought on the buzz. Once CNN and Jay Leno caught on, the media frenzy moved from word-of-mouth to word-of-chin (haha). Anyway, until now, I pretty much blew it off as a fad that may have exhibited the power of viral marketing, but wouldn't have much ability to get people seriously interested in a political issue or candidate.

Could Kintera's grant program appease the anti-business method patent crowd? Probably not. However, the software provider's expanded Innovation Grants program is an indication that the company is making an effort to help some nonprofit clients access technology that might be out of their reach otherwise.

According to a Kintera press release, "The new 2005 program will offer technology support for a select number of charities and causes, including organizations raising funds for disaster relief and those providing services to foster civic participation, as well as groups in sectors such as healthcare, education and religion."

Initial recipients, announced today, include water-related organizations, World Water Day 2005 and Ethos International, as well as The Global Fund for Women and Fuerza Latina, a non-profit group educating young Latinos.

Wow -- has anybody noticed all the paid links that result from a Google search for John Bolton, Bush's nominee as Ambassador to the UN? It looks like both detractors and supporters are gearing up for a tough match when his nomination is reviewed next week:

Just about every friend of mine who grew up in Virginia is a lifetime member of the NRA, even though many of them despise the organization. Why? Because the NRA had a great gimmick years back whereby kids who sent in their $20 would get offers to go on free fishing trips and get all kinds of neat stuff mailed to them, including a piece of paper that promised a rich and lasting lifetime relationship (currently the NRA offers lifetime for adults at $750 with a "free" leather jacket).

Of course, it's common practice for advocacy groups to pad their member lists anyway they can. The predominance of internet advocacy means this will get only worse. And the meaning of "member" has been diluted to the extent that for many groups, it means giving your e-mail address, or just a dollar for the cause.

An article from the Houston Voice looks at the Human Rights Campaign and how it justifies its claim of 650,000 members:

When it comes to new integrations with technology and politics there is a buzz in the air and it is coming from people’s pockets. Among two of the first-ever North American conferences on the integration of the mobile medium with politics took place back to back this September. Last Tuesday (Sept 13th) the Institute of Politics Democracy and the Internet (IPDI) launched their Politics-to-Go Handbook: A Guide to Using Mobile Technology in Politics with a four-hour event that featured a dual panel discussion with mobile industry luminaries from both the commercial and public arena.

The event also featured practical examples by maintaining a mobile website (from which people could register) and a moblog (which allowed people to take pictures at the event with their camera phones and immediately post them to a blog via MMS or Email).