As I waited in line to early vote yesterday and watched voters punch at the touchscreen, bend over to get a closer look at the screen and raise their hands to require assistance I wondered how much usability testing our electronic voting system in Arkansas has undergone? This is the 2nd time I’ve voted using an electronic ballot so it has at least had some real world testing, but from just casually observing the 10 people voting in front of me in line there were some definite issues.

In general, I didn’t have any problems voting completing my ballot in under five minutes, but a couple of citizens stayed at their voting station the entire 20 minutes I was in the early voting site. In general if the voter was under 45-50, it didn’t seem they had any problems with voting, but voters that looked over 50 had a few issues and then voters over 65 took a considerably longer amount of time to cast a ballot.

Most younger voters are probably more familiar with computers and touchscreens than older voters. Of course back when we voted with pencils most older voters were more familiar with pencils and paper than younger voters.

The election worker who set-up my ballot told me at least three times that he had numerous complaints that the party affiliation line under each candidate was too small and make sure that I read it (of course, he didn’t realize that I just ignore party affiliation when I vote).

From my perspective I thought the ballot was easy to read. It was apparent what race I was voting in, who the candidates for office were and their party affiliation. The touch screen was very responsive to my command. My ballot was four pages long which I felt was a little long, but it really didn’t take to long to fill it out. The only part that slightly confused me was how many times I had to press complete to let the machine know I was done– I think it was three.

• Facebook – “Candidates who update their profile page regularly give fans a reason to return more frequently, resulting
  in higher rates of interaction and larger fan communities.”
• Twitter – “High rates of messaging result in greater absolute numbers of followers and a greater level of follower engagement.”
• YouTube – “The most popular political videos are campaign advertisements and position statements crafted specifically for the Web.”

I know this sounds conspiracy theorist, but it’s not. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has actually collected training documents from the feds detailing procedures.

• IRS training material on how to search social media, google streetview to investigate taxpayer’s and their business
• Department of Justice powerpoint slides detailing social media companies data rentention policies and how well they cooperate with investigations (facebook does, twitter doesn’t)

Also, I know that the feds aren’t the only governmental body using what you publish on the Internet against you. I personally know someone who was audited by the Arkansas Department of Revenue because of the professionalism of their web site (I guess we all know who is next after this post).

The site is built on WordPress with all the feeds pulled in using the RSS widget. WordPress uses iThemes Builder Astro child  theme customized with the builder style manager plug-in.

The commission also examined issued the media is facing recommending:

• Direct media policy toward innovation, competition, and support for business models that provide marketplace incentives for quality journalism.
• Increase the role of higher education,community and nonprofit institutions as hubs of journalistic activity and other information-sharing for local communities.

Thanks to Chris for sharing the video.

Here’s a long video on the end of the RMN (21 minutes, but it’s worth it.).  If you can watch it in full screen in HD.

This year we have my brother-in-law’s Tolbert Report with his ubiquitous flip camera and house speaker Robbie Will’s new blog also keeping us informed on what is going down at the Capitol. I can promise you the Tolbert Report will have a slightly different take on the legislature’s actions than the rest of the pack, but I am wondering if Robbie Will’s will have the stamina to keep up with all the duties of being Speaker and keeping the blog up to date and responding to comments and questions from the blog (it’s fun reading about his struggles with technology).

It’s also interesting to see how the Arkansas legislature agenda compares to other states. The National Conference of State Legislatures has released their  top nine issues of 2009.

In the US Congress keeps extending copyright law primarily under the influence of Disney to keep Mickey Mouse out of the public domain by extending copyright protection eleven times in the last forty-five years.  Lawrence Lessig, Internet law guru argues that the expiration of copyright (and the start of public domain) creates a culture where people could take and build upon what went before, but our current copyright law prevents innovation throught the restriction of derivative works.