Upcoming Trend—Voting With Apps

 

The Sovereign app unites blockchain and liquid democracy, a form of democracy that gives people more control over their votes by allowing them to vote directly on issues themselves or pass their vote on to a delegate.

The developers believe the, Democracy Earth, can solve a couple of problems associated with this type of democracy, including the ability of popular users to amass an unhealthy number of votes and the tendency for voters to become exhausted by the seemingly infinite number of issues requiring votes.

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The App That Failed Iowa Yesterday

Due to a coding error, the app, created by a company called Shadow Inc., wasn’t reporting the correct data, according to the Iowa Democratic Party. The error resulted in the Democrats delaying all public reporting of the results of Monday’s caucuses, and has sown chaos and confusion in a hotly contested and deeply important primary.

The New York Times reported that many precinct chiefs had difficulty downloading the app, and Motherboard’s screenshots give hints as to why that might be. The app was not deployed through traditional app stores or even side loaded using an enterprise certificate. Instead, it was deployed through the TestFairy testing platform, which is similar to Apple’s TestFlight and used predominantly for Android and iOS apps that are not yet finalized.

The screenshot from Motherboard also reveal that the app was distributed using the platform’s free tier and not its enterprise one. That means Shadow didn’t even pony up for the TestFairy plan that comes with single sign-on authentication, unlimited data retention, and end-to-end encryption. Instead, it looks like the company used the version of TestFairy anyone can try for free, which deletes any app data after 30 days and limits the number of test users that can access the app to 200.

Bing’s Political Index

Bing’s Political Index compares candidates’ stances on top political issues with that of the American public. You can calculate your Bing Political Index (BPI) score and compare your opinions on top political issues with the presidential candidates and the American public.

 

The findings of a Yahoo News survey poll  revealed,that of the  5,188 registered voters conducted ahead of the Digital Democracy conference in Iowa Thursday, Blacks, Latinos and Asian-Americans all have more positive views on the use of technology in politics than whites do. And Blacks stand out as the group who feel most strongly that the Internet and social media have helped make American politics more representative of society.

Over 70 percent of Blacks said they think the Internet and social media ensure that political campaigns are more transparent. This compares to 69 percent of Asian-Americans, 63 percent of Hispanics and 59 percent of whites. When asked whether the Internet and social media have affected the political influence of minority voters, 55 percent of Blacks said technology has made such voters more influential. Fifty-one percent of Hispanics, 45 percent of whites and 43 percent of Asian-Americans felt the same. Registered voters agreed that technology has made political campaigns more negative. Whites (57 percent) were the group most likely to share this view, followed by Asian-Americans (51 percent) and Hispanics (50 percent). While 41 percent of Blacks said the Internet and social media have made campaigns more negative, 34 percent of Blacks said technology had no effect whatsoever on political campaigns. Voters across the spectrum also told pollsters they believed technology contributed to the spread of misinformation about politics and the election, with 85 percent of whites sharing this view, followed by 83 percent of Asian-Americans, 81 percent of Hispanics and 78 percent of Blacks.