CurtMonash writes "Barack Obama promised to appoint the United States' first Chief Technology Officer. Naturally, the blogosphere is full of discussion as to who that should be. I favor American Management Systems founder and former IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti. Richard Koman thinks it should be one of the better state CTOs. John Doerr, going in a different direction, thinks it should be his partner Bill Joy. We can bandy names back and forth all month, but first a more fundamental question needs to be answered: What do we need most — a get-things-done CIO (Chief Information Officer), or a more visionary true CTO? I think it's a CIO, and based on his campaign statements it appears Obama agrees. Management of government IT is a huge, generally unsolved problem, and we need somebody deeply experienced to have a fighting chance. Of course, that doesn't preclude recruiting a visionary CTO in addition, but the highest priority is a CIO. What do you think?"

Geek Satire writes "Voting works only if you believe your vote gets counted accurately. The 2008 US elections have avoided many well-known problems of the 2004 and 2000 elections, but many problems remain. O'Reilly News interviewed Dr. Barbara Simons, advisor to the Federal Election Assistance Commission, to review electronic voting in the 2008 US elections, discussing the physical security of storing and maintaining election machines, the move from electronic back to paper ballots, and why open source voting machines don't necessarily solve problems of bugs, backdoors, and audits."

mallumax writes "Obama has launched Change.gov. According to the site 'Change.gov provides resources to better understand the transition process and the decisions being made as part of it. It also offers an opportunity to be heard about the challenges our country faces and your ideas for tackling them. The Obama Administration will reflect an essential lesson from the success of the Obama campaign: that people united around a common purpose can achieve great things.' The site is extensive and contains Obama's agenda for economy and education among many others. They first define the problem and then lay out the plan. Everything is in simple English without a trace of Washington-speak. The site also has details about the transition. According to many sources, Obama's transition efforts started months ago. The copyright for the content is held by 'Obama-Biden Transition Project, a 501c(4) organization'."

The New York Times reports that Craigslist has reached an agreement with 40 state attorneys general to tame its notoriously unruly "erotic services" listings. Clever diplomacy: according to the article, Craigslist "said that it will charge erotic services vendors a small fee for each ad — about $10, Mr. Buckmaster said — and require that they use a credit card for the payment. It will donate the money to charities that combat child exploitation and human trafficking. This, theoretically, will let the company confirm not just a phone number but also an identity." I hope they work on cleaning the weird spammers from the ordinary personal ads, too.

jddeluxe writes "In an article in today's NY Times, John Doerr of Kleiner-Perkins proffered up Bill Joy's name when queried by Barack Obama for a recommendation for the position of Chief Technology Officer of the Unites States which Obama has promised to create and that the country is overdue to have. I think that's a brilliant idea, and while you're at it, have the FCC report to him as well, why don't you?" If Bill is unavailable, I'll throw my hat in the ring, although I'm holding out for Secretary of Tubes.

dunezone writes "As the election ends, news is coming out from both campaigns on what happened behind closed doors. During the summer, the Obama campaign had their systems hacked, but so did McCain — and not by each other, but by a third party. '... both the FBI and the Secret Service came to the campaign with an ominous warning: "You have a problem way bigger than what you understand," an agent told Obama's team. "You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system." The following day, Obama campaign chief David Plouffe heard from White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, to the same effect: "You have a real problem ... and you have to deal with it." The Feds told Obama's aides in late August that the McCain campaign's computer system had been similarly compromised.'" Also from the article: "Officials at the FBI and the White House told the Obama campaign that they believed a foreign entity or organization sought to gather information on the evolution of both camps' policy positions — information that might be useful in negotiations with a future administration."

Last night, around 11pm, all the major networks announced that Senator Barack Obama had won the election. Soon after, Senator McCain conceded. There were no crazy partisan court hearings, just a simple election. This is your chance to talk about it and what it means for the future of our nation.

An anonymous reader writes "Diebold Inc. and its subsidiary, Premier Election Solutions, is using Ghostscript in its electronic election systems even though Diebold and PES 'have not been granted a license to modify, copy, or distribute any of Artifex's copyrighted works,' Artifex claims in court papers filed late last month in US District Court for Northern California. The gs-devel list first brought up the possible GPL violation a year ago."

miller60 writes "News sites and political blogs are expecting extraordinary traffic tonight as Americans track results of the Presidential election, and are scaling their infrastructure to meet the challenge. Yahoo anticipates its Election Night traffic may be three times the volume seen in 2004, when it had 80 million page views on Election Day and 142 million more visits the following day. Hosting companies say customers have been ordering extra servers and load balancing services, while content delivery networks are also expecting a busy night. Will traffic approach record levels? Akamai's Net Usage Index, which tracks traffic to its customer news sites, is one metric to watch."

We made it. It's election day. Tomorrow we'll know. So for today's election discussion story, I'm throwing it wide open: let's discuss the election itself. Who are your picks and why. And also what about your actual experience voting today? Did Diebold eat your vote or did everything go off without flaw?

In 24 hours, many of you will be able to vote. So as we come down to the wire, this is really our last chance to talk about the issues. We've already discussed Health Care, the War, and the Economy. Today I'm opening up the floor to discuss education. Perhaps no other issue will matter more in 50 years. Which candidate will make the next generation smarter?

An anonymous reader tips a piece from the UK's Daily Mail that recounts another sad tale of the careless loss of massive amounts of private user data. "Ministers have been forced to order an emergency shutdown of a key Government computer system to protect millions of people's private details. The action was taken after a memory stick was found in a pub car park containing confidential passcodes to the online Government Gateway system, which covers everything from tax returns to parking tickets. An urgent investigation is now under way into how the stick, belonging to the company which runs the flagship system, came to be lost."

Mr. Slippery writes "Think hanging chads, illegal purges of the voter rolls, and insecure voting machines are bad? The New Yorker looks back at how we used to vote back in the good old days: 'A man carrying a musket rushed at him. Another threw a brick, knocking him off his feet. George Kyle picked himself up and ran. He never did cast his vote. Nor did his brother, who died of his wounds. The Democratic candidate for Congress, William Harrison, lost to the American Party's Henry Winter Davis. Three months later, when the House of Representatives convened hearings into the election, whose result Harrison contested, Davis's victory was upheld on the ground that any "man of ordinary courage" could have made his way to the polls.' Now I feel like a wuss for complaining about the lack of a voter-verified paper trail." The article notes the American penchant for trying to fix voting problems with technology — starting just after the Revolution. This country didn't use secret ballots, an idea imported from Australia, until quite late in the 19th century.

An anonymous reader asks "What information sources and social networking sites will you be using to supplement the election coverage on TV next Tuesday? I am ready with a big HDTV with Comcast, a Mac mini, and and an Xbox 360. I also have two laptops (one good for websites and one for streaming video), an old-school Blackberry, a 'regular' cell phone, a Nokia N810, a Squeezebox, and finally Sirius Satellite Radio. Which websites should I watch for live county results? I already know about the Twitter Vote Report for tracking and reporting voting issues and I already watch 'CNN Reporters' on Friendfeed for the national flair. What other Twitter accounts should I follow? Which urgent ones should I send to my phones? Which YouTube accounts or keywords I should subscribe to in Miro? What are the most popular sites for posting 'on-scene' videos — iReport, Flickr, something else? I know most local Fox affiliates are great about streaming, but is there a page that lists all of the streams, in case I need to quickly focus on one city or area? Basically, how would you configure all those gadgets?" This reader might find some guidance in what to focus on from a video produced by reader (and data modeler) Bruce Nash that lays out a predicted timeline for when the media will call each state, depending on when the polls close and how tight each race is expected to be.

A University of Texas poll has found that 23 percent of Texans are convinced that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is a Muslim. Only 45 percent of the people polled correctly identified Obama as a Protestant Christian. Nationwide, the number of people who believe in the "Secret Muslim Conspiracy" is about the same as those who believe that the moon landing was faked (5-10 percent), which makes the high numbers in Texas unusual.

Yesterday we discussed the war and how foreign policy will matter in your decision next Tuesday. Today our series of election discussion pieces continues with Health Care. With an obesity epidemic, a failing economy, and ballooning health care costs, which candidate has the best answers to making sure that Americans are able to stay healthy without America being bankrupted in the process?

pgoldtho writes "PC Mag has a story about why the 'white-space' spectrum that will be freed when TV broadcasts switch to digital should be available for unlicensed use. This would allow it to be used to deliver broadband connectivity in rural areas and create a 'third pipe' alternative to the cable/telco duopoly. The FCC is scheduled to vote on this November 4th. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has filed an emergency appeal to block this vote. If the NAB succeeds, the issue will be kicked into next year. Which would mean a new FCC, Congress, and Administration."

Gamasutra is running an article discussing the influence of games and gamers on the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. The connection, while minor, is continuing to strengthen, from allowing people to register to vote through their consoles, to in-game advertising, to games about and involving the candidates. However, it may still be an uphill climb as media-sharing becomes easier. From Gamasutra: "There are reasons games have grown slowly compared to other technologies for political outreach. The most important one is also the most obvious: since 2004, online video and social networks have become the big thing, as blogs were four years ago. Instead of urging voters to 'play my game,' as Loftus and I surmised, candidates urged their constituents to 'watch my video.' Online video became the political totem of 2008, from James Kotecki's dorm room interviews to CNN's YouTube debates."

I'm not sure how many electoral votes Azeroth has, but it could be a key battleground state.

cheezitmike writes "According to a story in the Washington Post, 'Maryland and Virginia are going old school after Tuesday's election. Maryland will scrap its $65 million electronic system and go back to paper ballots in time for the 2010 midterm elections. In Virginia, localities are moving to paper after the General Assembly voted last year to phase out electronic voting machines as they wear out. "The battle for the hearts and minds of voters on whether electronic systems are good or bad has been lost," Brace said. The academics and computer scientists who said they were unreliable "have won that battle."'"