Help Write Florida's 'Technology In Elections Act' 10:52 AM

In response to the pay-per-click advertising debacle that arose in Florida last Fall, State Representatives Eric Eisnaugle (R-Orlando) and Darryl Rouson (D-St. Petersburg) have introduced Florida HB 869 to modernize Florida's election laws to account for new forms of technology and social media.  The bi-partisan bill, deemed the 'Technology In Elections Act' (TIEA), is likely the most effective and rapid way to modernize Florida election law to account for online advertising and politicians' presence on social networks.  

Both Reps. Eisnaugle and Rouson have reached out to online politicos (including myself) for input on this piece of legislation.  As I got to thinking about this bill and what it could do for political campaigns in Florida, I began to imagine what debate and discussion over this bill online could do for government.  By leveraging the power of the internet that TIEA is fighting to protect, we can make the crafting of this bill the most open and transparent in Florida history.  That is why I am asking you - my online readers, followers and friends - to take this bill into your own hands and help modernize Florida election law.  

I have embedded the latest version of the bill below.  I invite all of you to read the bill thoroughly and make any recommendations you see fit in the comment section below.  All recommendations will be passed on directly to Reps. Eisnaugle and Rouson.  I have also invited Reps. Eisnaugle and Rouson to participate in a live online video conference - open to the public - to discuss the recommendations set forth by you on this blog.  Stay tuned!  

TIEA will usher Florida's election laws into the 21st century, but perhaps more importantly, with your hard work and effort, we can make the exercise of crafting this bill a model for government openness and transparency through the web.
 

CLICK HERE to tweet the following: Join me in helping the Florida Legislature modernize FL election law - http://bit.ly/cfWpZP

Tweeting Through @KarlRove's 'Courage and Consequence' 8:15 AM

This weekend, I "live-tweeted" my way through Karl Rove's recently released book, Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight.  In case you missed my live-tweeting of the book, here are my Twitter notes in their entirety:

• Rove’s mother killed herself on September 11, 1981. #meetkarl
• Rove had breakfast with a lingerie-clad Elizabeth Taylor while she was married to Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) #meetkarl
• Rove: “If you didn’t measure an activity, it tended to remain undone.” #meetkarl
• Rove: “I was counting on technology to carve out my niche in the direct mail business.” #meetkarl
• Lance Armstrong lived next door to Rove’s direct mail firm in the early 80s. #meetkarl
• Rove: “The Bush campaign was not worthy of the 41st President.” #meetkarl
• This surprises me - Rove only recalls GWB dropping the f-bomb once. #meetkarl
• Rove in 2000: “The establishment is not what it used to be.” Even truer in 2010. #meetkarl
• Rove cites Tallahassee veteran Randy Enwright as the Florida “quarterback” for Bush/Cheney 2000. #meetkarl
• After realizing how close FL would be Jeb told GWB that Broward and Dade would be “good for us.” Randy Enwright disagreed. #meetkarl
• Rove’s Secret Service code name was ‘Pilgrim’. #meetkarl
• Rove says that he was first to tell GWB of plane crashing into WTC. I always thought it was Card - http://bit.ly/cMU201
• Rove was the only one in the White House with a Blackberry on 9/11. #meetkarl
• Rove thought Bush 2004 would be much like Lincoln 1864 when Lincoln was re-elected in the midst of the Civil War #meetkarl
• Rove: Bush/Cheney ’04 acquired 8.5 million e-mail addresses (nice work @PatrickRuffini) #meetkarl 
• Rove: “Senator Bob Graham of Florida was just plain weird…We just couldn’t be that lucky to get him as our opponent.”
• Rove knew ’04 exit polls were crap when he saw (R) POTUS candidate losing white men in FL which hadn’t happened since 1964
• Rove: Fmr. POTUS Clinton told him that his 72 hour strategy in ’06 was “genius” as GOP should have lost way more seats.
• Rove: Obama '08 focus on the internet was a page stolen from Bush ’04. #meetkarl              

Don’t Buy, Sell or Steal Email Lists 8:12 AM

13 million e-mail addresses acquired by a single political campaign is astonishing.  But what if Obama for America had purchased that e-mail list instead of growing it organically?  Would it have been nearly as effective in GOTV or raising 2/3 of Obama's half-a-billion dollars raised online?  No way.

Blue State Digital (Obama's digital strategy team) spells out why in a recent blog post.  Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I figured I would share their thoughts with you on why your campaign should avoid buying, selling or stealing e-mail lists:

1. These people didn’t ask to hear from you. Nobody – not even you -- likes to receive emails from organizations that they didn’t ask to hear from. Sure, your list might suddenly double in size, but do those names care about your cause? Are they going to take action on your behalf? Probably not.
   
2. You’re killing your statistics. Everybody who runs an email campaign is obsessed with metrics. What’s a good open rate? What’s a good click-through rate? What’s a good action rate? What’s a low unsubscribe rate? If you dilute your email list with purchased names, you’re immediately dropping those statistics.
   
3. It’s disingenuous. One of the key components of a really successful online campaign is authenticity. People organize online because they want to be a part of a grassroots movement bigger than themselves; they don’t want to feel like they’re a pawn of a purchased PR stunt. 
4. Your own email service provider won’t let you upload the list. Nearly every company in the political/nonprofit technology industry has a policy against purchased email lists.

Click here to read the entire post from BSD

Sayfie Review iPhone App 9:54 AM

My last few months serving as Executive Editor of Sayfie Media were largely spent focused on designing and managing the development of the Sayfie Review iPhone app, which was finally released last month.  I could not be prouder of the final product and the team who built this incredible app.  Justin Sayfie has always thought three steps ahead of political news outlets in Florida and this iPhone app is proof that he's not done yet.

The app brings an elegant design to every Florida politico's favorite political news service - making SayfieReview.com content easy to digest and, more importantly, easy to share from any iPhone or iPod Touch.

SayfieReview.com's 5 most essential services are elegantly displayed in the app's 5 menu options - Today's News, Blog Ticker, Videos, Most Read Stories and Links.  What makes the app so valuable to me though is it's seamless integration of sharing functionality via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.  By connecting your Facebook or Twitter account with the app, you can easily share your favorite links from the Sayfie Review app with your various networks.  As these networks continue to serve as primary sources of news aggregation for consumers, this feature will only grow in it's significance and value.

The release of the Sayfie Review iPhone app adds yet another mobile option for SayfieReview.com readers.  In July of 2008, the Sayfie Review became one of the first news organizations in Florida to launch a Blackberry app.

Although the Sayfie Review iPhone app has only been heavily promoted since this past Tuesday, the app already boasts a 4 star rating on iTunes.  If you haven't already downloaded the app on your iPhone or iPod Touch, you can do so by clicking here.

My Friends Killed the Newspaper Editor 8:58 AM

The latest report from Pew Internet confirms what many of us have known for a while now – our friends and socialgraphs are slowly diminishing the influence of the once all-powerful newspaper editors. In the study, Pew found that 75% of Americans who consume news online discover their news through social networking sites or through forwarded e-mail, and 52% of them share news with others through these channels.

This study confirms suspicions we have had for some time – our Facebook news streams and Twitter feeds are becoming our “homepage” for news consumption. NYTimes.com or CNN.com are no longer our browser’s homepage; and if they are, they are not likely the central hub for where we consume our news. The same Pew study found that only 7% of those surveyed are receiving information and news from a single media platform. Our news sources are more diversified than ever, but what’s more important is how we are being driven to this news content.

Before mass online news consumption, we were forced to consume whatever newspaper editors and TV producers decided we should read and watch. In the early years of online news consumption, news aggregation was not a necessity, as our sources for quality online news were slim. In these days, we could set our browser’s homepage to NYTimes.com and be satisfied with the flow of information we were receiving from the newspaper’s site editors. Today, we have the ability to create our own personalized news aggregation services from the news sources we trust most – our ‘friends’ and socialgraphs.

Gone are the days when a single newspaper’s website was the hub for all of one person’s news consumption, linking to various stories within that single hub of news. Today’s news consumption follows a hub-n-spoke model in which social networks are the hub that direct us out to the spokes of various news sources linked to by our friends and trusted news aggregation ‘editors’.

As more Americans rely on social networks as their primary source of news consumption, it will be increasingly important for news organizations, political campaigns and brands to find creative ways to convince individuals to spread news on their behalf. Newspaper editors will continue to have nearly exclusive influence over what is printed by their publications, but their power over driving eyeballs to this content is now in the hands of the masses. Every one of our friends is now a news aggregation ‘editor’ with the power to drive us from our social news hub to the various spokes of trusted news content.