A far cry from the microchips, wires, and bits and bytes that form them, what computers have come to mean in our culture has manifested itself in so many positive and negative ways. It's no different in politics, where campaigning has seized technology as a way to reach out and connect in an emotional and substantive way. And yet in the actual voting process, the technology has become a hinderance to many, with fear of what it can do stunting the progress beyond the butterfly ballot, and with those who have been courageous enough to make that progress hitting the bumps in the road that come with any technological advance. (For evidence, see what Apple's going through with its new Maps app.)
Today, Melissa will get technical in a number of ways, including an examination of technology in our politics, how early voting is going and will go -- whether people are voting on paper or using a computer -- and the upcoming debates (sure to be live-tweeted by yours truly and thousands more). She'll also take the mess Scott Brown has made for himself with race-baiting Elizabeth Warren to take a look at race as a social construct. We'll also have a look at sex trafficking and slavery, which also has a disturbing online aspect we'll explore.
Keep an eye out also for another sterling Footnote, and Melissa's daughter making a cameo! We'll also invite these folks into #nerdland:
- Jonathan Capehart, opinion writer at the Washington Post.
- Katon Dawson, former South Carolina GOP chair, and former senior advisor to Gov. Rick Perry's presidential campaign.
- Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, NBC Latino contributor, director of communications for Latino Decisions, and fellow at the LBJ School at the University of Texas.
- Kevin Gover, director of the Museum of the American Indian, civil rights attorney, and member of the Pawnee tribe.
- Asia Graves, survivor of human trafficking, and case manager at Fair Girls.
- Amy Jo Martin, founder and CEO of Digital Royalty, and author of the upcoming "Renegades Write the Rules."
- Andrea Powell, executive director and co-founder of Fair Girls.
- Jamal Simmons, democratic consultant at the Raben Group.
As always, folks -- be sure to interact with us during the show here in the comments of this post, on Facebook, and on Twitter, using the hashtag #nerdland. We look forward to having you join us at 10am ET on msnbc!
Leave a Comment:
I get a receipt for just about every transaction I ever make, even the ones I don't really care about. Why is it I can't get a receipt for my vote?
Retail stores can track millions of product choices. Why is it we can't track just a few choices for the most important thing we do - Voting???
There is an issue with culture and native americans that isn't being addressed. My biological grandfather was full blood and sent to a mission to be "whitened". I was adopted and my heritage was minimized until I was a parent a sought out my birth mother and learned I was 1/4 I was told it represented less than a toe of my background. There are maybe 20 native speakers left, no job opportunities on the reservation and severe drug and alcoholism on my reservation. With only 12, 500 of the Blackfeet at 1/4 or more left and a culture with no written word, as a trained history teacher and parent I try to educate my children about our heritage of what I can learn but do not what to show them what is left on display on our reservation. Here in Montana the reservations represent the highest poverty schools in our state. I as a teacher in a school with a 1/5-1/3 Blackfeet population received a salary of just over 24K a year. Thoughts about social construct, culture and education?
Yes Fran, let's all get vote receipts so that we can have vote selling. Or worse yet so that your bullying boss, church, spouse or whatever can demand to see your receipt to make sure you voted the "right" way.
And read the news. A whole bunch of major banks' internet servers got hacked this week (apparently from the Middle East.) Millions of people couldn't access their accounts, pay bills, etc. If an election server got similarly hacked on a major election day and voting was over the internet, then what??
Voter verified paper ballots marked by the voter, with audits of all elections and more public oversight. That's the only way.
Sarcasm is not needed to make your point. I had not thought of the point you made, and it was a good one. OTOH, could there not simply be some simple data and a confirmation code? I didn't recommend voting over the internet, but I would appreciate being able to verify how my vote was counted on the internet.
Voter verified paper voting is a good, time tested way, but I don't agree that it's the ONLY way. We shouldn't stop working on a problem just because it's hard.
Tractor women are the worse off of all ethnic groups Elizabeth warren was only hired by Harvard because they view her as covering two protected groups women and native Americans and she as mostly European gets a head of darker skinned natives she is duplicities I would never check that box and if I was hired I would make it clear that most native Americans would never be hired by Harvard that was only hired because I was an upper-class women who could trace my so called Native American roots with connections and that Harvard didn't respect me just felt I was a token
Went to the website for FAIR Girls after seeing your show today. Their website is down, email bounced back. Can you direct me to the right place, or let them know they need to look into their site's status.
Go to and you can get to the FAIR Girls website. I was just there.
What if Elizabeth Warren had said she was of African American descent? What would the discussion be like? I'm glad you had Mr Grover on to speak of the issue, but also a Native should of been on the round table panel as well. You should follow stories in regards to NativeAmerican whether they are positive or negative,you will see plenty of racist and ignorantcomments!!
@PapaTex - The website for FAIR Girls is http://fairgirls.org/. It worked for me just now; give it another try.
Keep an eye out; we'll have a blog from them here on the blog within minutes.
Kevin, the American Indian Museum director you had on to discuss the Warren issue was a very poor, very poor presentation of the problem. It was timid and weak. Also, most American Indians do not view "museums" which horde stolen tribal artefacts as honourable at all. Kevin is also a well-known BIA official, and the BIA has failed for decades to represent fairly and honestly the rights of non-reservation American Indians. I feel American Indian leadership has failed to step up here and support Ms. Warren as you noted...there is no reason to doubt her claims or understanding of who her ancestors are. There is a definitive blog on this at sacredpipe.blogspot.com, if you would like some real American Indian reaction to this issue. It is to bad you could not have found someone who lives in the real world to speak for American Indians, maybe even a few of them. It is sad to see the issue glossed over even while trying to appear explorative. Why is is it so hard?
I am a licensed educator in Montana and a member of the Blackfoot tribe. Native American Education is required and to get your license you must take a course in Native American History but no such requirement existist for African American History, with similar backgrounds of having our histories stolen from us I can draw on that but I find this disreguard for the heritage of a major source of our nations wealth so misunderstood and disreguarded... I try to explain that we can look at two major sources for that wealth, the richest mountain in the world in Butte Montana and slavery. I also try to draw on the history of 10% of Montana at one point being Chinese and them being forced to live underground but the resources and support for this in such a homogenous state is a challenge and so mandates for all states as with Native American Education would be not only adventagous for students moving to more diverse schools but inperitive to their understanding of their own nations history. How we can teach US History when we as educators are not well versed on such an important issue eludes me.