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Portables Software Government Hardware Politics

Phones App Shows Political Leanings By Location 54

Posted by timothy from the spectrum-issues-make-it-impractical-in-europe dept.
An anonymous reader writes "This phone-enabled, java-app, Red | Blue, allows the user to identify the political leanings of their current location. "By taking your current location, and finding the nearest individual donors of campaign funds from the publicly available data from the Federal Elections Commission, red | blue is able to provide you an accurate reading of the political leanings of your surroundings -- red for Republican or blue for Democrat.""
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Phones App Shows Political Leanings By Location More

Phones App Shows Political Leanings By Location

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  • I wonder what it was designed for (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kanpai ( 713697 ) <KanpaiWai AT gmail DOT com> on Monday October 04, 2004 @11:12PM (#10436527)
    You have to wonder what exactly people have in mind when they make these things - though this is a cool little app.

    Now i can do a quick check to find out whether it's safe for me to make loudmouthed comments about abortion and gay marriage in a public place, or where i should start handing out pins. It's certainly cheaper then getting run out of town or punched in the face.

  • New technology (Score:3, Funny)

    by BaltikaTroika ( 809862 ) on Monday October 04, 2004 @11:22PM (#10436576)
    It's like the old days when you could tell GI Joe apart from Cobra by the colour of their lasers.

    BaltikaTroika

  • Find donors here (Score:4, Informative)

    by kajoob ( 62237 ) on Monday October 04, 2004 @11:24PM (#10436583)
    Here [opensecrets.org] is a cool little search that let's you find who in your area (or wherever you want to search) donated how much to whom.
    • See, this is disturbing, how is this not an invasion of privacy? When I made my little contribution to [candidate] how was I to know that my personal info would end up in a publicly searchable database? That's nobody's business but me, the candidate, and the FEC. Seriously - how is this public information?
      • Seriously - how is this public information?

        Your answer is right here:

        and the FEC.

        The FEC is a governmental agency and their records are public by the Freedom of Information Act.

      • Re:Find donors here (Score:2, Interesting)

        by bmetzler ( 12546 ) *
        how was I to know that my personal info would end up in a publicly searchable database? That's nobody's business but me, the candidate, and the FEC. Seriously - how is this public

        Keep this in mind the nest time you think that the Freedom of Information Act is a good thing. It comes back to bite you, doesn't it?

        Yes, it's always nice to be able to find dirt of the "bad guys." But when it is your personal information that is involved, Whew! Now it is another story.

        -Brent
        • Sure, but where do the lines get drawn? My tax return is between me and the IRS, and I don't expect THAT to become public information either. If I'd known it would be available like this, I'd have kept my money to myself.

          Now in this case I could certainly see statistical information being available, such as how much $ is donated to which candidates/groups, from any given area, but I see no reason for personal information including my address and workplace to be included in here. Interestingly, my name d

      • See, this is disturbing, how is this not an invasion of privacy?

        If you find the database at opensecrets.org disturbing, check out this other one I mentionned in another post yesterday: http://www.fundrace.org/neighbors.php [fundrace.org]. This database will give you the name, amount, employer and address for each donor.

      • The public interest in knowing who sponsors a candidate overrides your interest in keeping that private.

        This is a way-cool app.

        I found that among the top contributors to US Senate candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) (2003-04) are:

        A family named Soros from New York:

        SOROS, GEORGE, NEW YORK,NY 10108, SOROS FUND MANAGEMENT, 2/27/2004
        $12,000

        SOROS, JENNIFER NEW YORK,NY 10011 CONSULTANT 3/15/2004
        $12,000

        SOROS, JONATHAN NEW YORK,NY 10011 SOROS FUND MANAGEMENT 3/6/2004
        $12,000

        SOROS, ROBERT NEW YORK CITY,NY 10014 SORO

  • Cute (Score:2)

    by MBCook ( 132727 )
    Very interesting. I'll have to try this on my phone tomarrow.

    With all the predictions of "GPS on your phone will let them send you targeted ads" that I seem to see every once in a while, this is kind of cool. Does anyone know of any other programs like this? Wouldn't it be interesting to be able to see how many car accidents happen each year at the intersection your closest to, or what nationality the neighborhood your in is (based on the various kinds of restraunts near you, maybe). Anyone have any neat i

    • As a side note, does anyone know of a program that I could get for my phone (Java/J2ME) that would let me view it's GPS data (my location)? For some reason "they" don't want me to know where I am.

      J2ME is pretty least common denominator. I haven't checked but I suspect that if you could check your GPS with it you would do it through a vendor-specific extension which means I'll need to know what model of phone you're using to give a definitive answer.
  • I guess I'm taking the blue pill.
    • That was in reference to the Matrix. I forgot about the "other" blue pills out there.
      • We're geeks & don't need to worry about the "other" blue pill - don't worry, we understood ;)
      • You see what has happened to /. - you have to start explaining your inside jokes and geek sp33k.

        *shakes head*

        I think the signal to noise ratio is far to healthy, give me some fr1st ps0tting and star wars jokes any day.

  • Phones Do Show Political Leanings By Location (Score:5, Funny)

    by craXORjack ( 726120 ) on Monday October 04, 2004 @11:52PM (#10436737)
    If your cell phone is sitting on the dash of your two and a half ton SUV and you measure your fuel consumption in units of gallons/mile, you are proabably a republican.

    If your cell phone is in your jacket pocket and you are pretending it is a gun while you hold up a liquer store because you lost your factory job, you are proably a democrat.

    If you don't have a cell phone because you don't want to feed a huge greedy corporate oligopoly you are a Nader supporter.

    If your cell phone is inserted in your boyfriends ass, you are either a Barney Frank supporter, a log cabin republican, or possibly just a seriously disturbed individual.
    • If your cell phone is sitting on the dash of your two and a half ton SUV and you measure your fuel consumption in units of gallons/mile, you are proabably a republican.

      Please, more Clinton soccer moms drive SUV's than anyone else. They need it to take their kid and her friends to soccer..

      If your cell phone is in your jacket pocket and you are pretending it is a gun while you hold up a liquer store because you lost your factory job, you are proably a democrat.

      Thats just silly we all know democrats dont

  • Yet another locator tool (Score:3, Informative)

    by xlv ( 125699 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @12:28AM (#10436913)
    At http://www.fundrace.org/neighbors.php [fundrace.org], you can enter your address and see the contributors in your neighborhood...

  • Damnit. (Score:1)

    by torpor ( 458 )
    The world really is starting to feel like a bad Stephenson novel, day by day.

    What next? GPS-based border-patrols from the local KFC Syndicate?
    • No worries, this is being worked on. A local Tucson, Arizona company is setting up a Wi-Fi network along the border to protect us from low wage workers!

      I'll be damned if they keep the cost of our marijuana, and home building down!
  • red for Republican or blue for Democrat

    Shouldn't that be the other way around?
    Now I understand American politics even less.. :P

    • No, they just ignore the traditional colour/political spectrum associations. I'm sure there's some baroque historical reasoning behind it. Very disconcerting the first time you see a state breakdown map though, since the heartland/Bible belt is all red, which is hardwired to "Yay!", in my mind at least.

      Republicans are generally a fair way into the Right/Authoritarian area of the political compass [politicalcompass.org] while Democrats will normally be a little bit South-West of them.

      • Republicans are generally a fair way into the Right/Authoritarian area of the political compass while Democrats will normally be a little bit South-West of them.

        yea but is all depends on where you live, in MN iam am uber conservative man, but I sit just to the right of center on PC...

    • In Europe, red = left, blue = right.
      In the US, the other way round.

      On the other hand, you could argue US Democrats belong to the center-right by EU standards...

      • Re:WTF? (Score:3, Funny)

        by Krow10 ( 228527 )
        In Europe, red = left, blue = right. In the US, the other way round.

        On the other hand, you could argue US Democrats belong to the center-right by EU standards...

        You could extend this and point out that the US Republicans have gone so far right that they've rolled the meter.

        Cheers,
        Craig

    • Re:WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Minna Kirai ( 624281 )
      Shouldn't that be the other way around?

      It was only in 2000 that the USA got colors attached to each party. It happened during the televised results of the Presidential election (and the several day's worth of televised argueing about the outcome)

      All 5 major TV stations showed a map of which states were won by whom. Naturally, they did it in the 3 colors of the USA flag, and naturally white (blank) was used for undecided. At that time, 4/5 stations choose red for Republican. In the arguments that foll
  • The $64,000 question: will it tell you which of those reds and blues around you will bother to show up at the polls on election day?

  • Political Leaning != Total Value of Donations (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stomv ( 80392 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @08:38AM (#10438587) Homepage
    The two phrases simply don't mean the same thing. Sure, it might be an indicator... but you know what is an even bigger indicator? Finding out how that particular voting precinct leaned in aggregate on the most recent presidential, senate, and house voting.

    Financial donations to political parties are a subset of political donations (PACs, volunteer time, etc). However, since its votes that count, and voting information is public, why not just use that?

    Or, why not use an accurate title to the thread?
  • Can someone explain to me why we swapped the Red/Blue designations after the 1996 election? Or was the 1996 election the first with Red Republicans and Blue Dems? either way why did this happen? People talk Red/Blue like its an eternal struggle thats been that way for decades, it wasn't too long ago that Red states were democratic states, and blue states were republican. Why the odd, yet total shift in everyones designations?

  • Free? (Score:1)

    by slcdb ( 317433 )
    If this is free, like the website and the Creative Commons license says it's supposed to be, then why is Handango charging $5.37 to download it?
  • In Britain it would be much simpler to code; just the one colour. Three party politics (according to good old Charlie), one xerox dose of public underspending...

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