There has been much ado since the 2000 election regarding the future of the electoral college. To be expected considering we now have a President who did not win the popular vote. It certainly is a strange system… who are these people casting the votes? I’m guessing that they are not the diverse group of average Joes you’d expect. I’ve never met one of them, have you? They may as well all come from the bunker at Roswell, NM.

It may be far from a perfect system but before you pick up the picket sign or write a letter to your representative about how the electoral college disenfranchises your vote, consider the vote-less Puerto Rico.

Citizens of Puerto Rico became American citizens in 1917, a political move that twists with hypocrisy. They immediately became eligible for the draft, which was convenient given our involvement in World War I. However in a brilliant move Puerto Ricans were excluded from paying federal income tax. It is on that basis that they have been denied participation in government ever since. ‘No taxation without representation’ doesn’t mean anything if you don’t pay taxes.

If Puerto Rico was allowed to participate in the Presidential elections, they would garner about 8 electoral votes. There are 26 states with less than that. Could you imagine the horror the GOP would face having another 8 votes from a completely Hispanic constituency? That is not a wildcard any politician would willingly introduce at a time when the nation is so split by partisanship.

To recap: you can call yourselves Americans and get shot defending America. But since you don’t pay taxes you have no right to participate in government. Apparently voting is not an inalienable right. Apparently it is our tax dollars, not our hearts and souls, that entitle us to equality.

Last week President Bush set forth a mandate of sorts for the healthcare community to cooperatively develop a centralized electronic health records database. He also suggested that Medicare, as the largest healthcare consumer in America, should lead this effort. Cynicism and partisan politics aside, when this happens it will be a good thing. But you can’t give much credit to a person standing at the sea shore telling you that the tide is about to start coming in. Ask any technologist and they’ll agree that we all see this coming. It is part of the intended evolution of technology to replace paper filing systems.

As it was with the Internet. Everybody knew computers would eventually revolutionize worldwide communications. Networks and modems got faster and more secure, universities started connecting their networks to share information, several types of electronic mail were created, even the military was in on the action with ARPANET. Now we have the World Wide Web — something we all saw coming but had no idea what it would look like when it got here.

My real problem here is the pressure of the imposed 10 year timeline. With the Internet we could have never set out to create what we have. The beauty of the system is that it evolved through natural selection: some technologies worked and got stronger, some didn’t and faded away. Years ago the realestate industry tried to revolutionize their MLS system hoping to transform the old phonebook-style registry into to nationwide searchable database. They forced a solution rather than letting one grow with technology and are only now catching up with other similar systems like Autotrader.com and Rent.com

A centralized medical records system will be the Internet of healthcare. As such issues like ease of use, accessibility and cost of entry will be paramount to its success. Trying to build such a thing in one fell swoop will result either in a severely limited system that is too reliant on old thinking or an overbaked ‘cutting edge’ system that is so complicated it gets in its own way.

A collaborative called ‘Connecting for Health’ published some good ideas:

Creating a loose technical framework: “a non-proprietary network of networks to support the rapid acceleration of electronic connectivity that will enable the flow of information to support patient care.”Addressing financial barriers: “The development of financial and other incentives and related processes to promote improvements in healthcare quality through the adoption of clinical applications and information exchange based on standards. ” Engaging the American public: “Informing the public with a consistent set of messages to be used by government, healthcare, and consumer leaders to promote the benefits of electronic connectivity and to encourage patients and consumers to access their own health information. ”
These are identical to concepts that were critical to the development and proliferation of the Internet. They all rely on careful introspection and patients. While I admire this administration’s attempt to support such an initiative, their contribution is more likely to be that of a bull in a china shop. If they really want to help they should start by establishing grants to fund private and institutional research that can investigate and develop these new technologies. In the long run something far better than we can imagine today will emerge.

In Florida it is hard to forget the fiasco that was the 2000 presidential election. After a week of the confusion I too was convinced that I had voted incorrectly. The insufferable droning by CNN analysts on correctly reading holes punched in paper voting cards was anything but this democracy’s finest hour. Experts couldn’t agree on how to identify a partially separated ‘chad.’ Who knew there were ‘chad’ experts out there? What the hell is a ‘chad’ anyway? The whole thing smelled pretty… well… pretty foul to me.

The first thing that came to my mind was to question why we were still using such a chaddy system. Myopic Florida seniors apparently can’t read for chad, though they don’t seem to have a problem getting cash from an ATM. As I expected the debacle provided impetus for implementation of an electronic voting system, something that was painfully overdue.

Four years later and the debates over these new systems are just starting to heat up, just in time for this year’s presidential election. Apparently no one ever thought to structure the new voting system’s design requirements around the requirements set forth in Florida’s constitution. The constitution of the State of Florida explicitly requires that any presidential voting system create a paper trail specifically for recount purposes. Maybe it didn’t occur to anyone that we’d ever possibly need to facilitate a recount during a presidential election. To be fair to the framers of our state’s constitution, they just could not have known how difficult it would be in the year 2004 to make a computer print data on paper. Oh the technological marvel that would allow me to have a receipt from Macy’s when I use my credit card, or to get my balance at an ATM. Imagine one day when we all can print our vacation photos at home!

With November approaching like a juggernaut and Bush’s approval ratings stagnating at a ridiculously contempt altitude, politics are decidedly on my mind. The question of how technology can and should influence politics is often painted as a complicated one. Modern tech movements such as opensource and peer-to-peer seem to present positive and negative ramifications for democracy. New politics for a networked planet is a decent overview of these problems you can read at Opendemocracy.org:

“Our concern with technology should be transitional, as we move from an essentially pre-computing age of politics into a new political era, where technology supports political systems but is effectively invisible.”

The concept of technology influencing world politics is frightening. Countless institutions have suffered as a result of being assimilated by the tech way to do things. Democracy already functions and flourishes in a tremendously delicate balance. Well if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Howard Dean got it right. He used the Internet as a tool to organize the biggest grass-roots campaign this nation has seen in decades. Meetup.com doesn’t change the way groups meet, it just makes the meeting part much easier to organize.

I’ve given a lot of thought to the idea of freedom. I think it’s important to try to understand the privilege of the life I live. For I have few scars of suffering and little experience with oppression. At the worst times of my life I still had food on my table, a roof over my head and a loving family. In my struggle to identify freedom I repeatedly find myself instead identifying the things from which I am free: slavery, exploitation, ideological oppression. But these are merely man-made things; if freedom is truly something universal there must be something more.

Are the animals of the African Serengeti free? Free from the captivity of a zoo or circus, perhaps. The nomadic Inuit peoples of the Arctic, are they free? Even they are no longer free from the influence of global commerce, politics and terror. Yet these too, are all man-made things. Is it possible that the idea of freedom itself is man-made?

Civilization as we know it accounts for less than one percent of the history of human activity on this planet. Until about 10,000 years ago humans numbered less than 10 million, barely making the top 100 of most proliferate species earth. They were free, though I wager would have no understanding of such a concept. Not for lack of intelligence; the oft-underestimated ‘prehistoric’ people possessed a highly developed intellect and mastery of exceptionally advanced technology. From crop rotation to brain surgery, these were not people who sought desperately for their next meal. Then why do I suggest they wouldn’t be able to comprehend such a simple idea as freedom? Why? Because the human mind comprehends through comparison. Put simply, you can’t have black without white. Freedom is like salvation — if you are not in trapped or in danger then you really have no need for them. They are not things that you can hold in your hand. By themselves they are useless as concepts.

If you live in America your freedom is from censorship and slavery and oppression. It is not, as most people think, the freedom to do whatever the hell you want. We are not free, from our responsibility to other people. Ours is a tremendously socially interdependent species, upon which we’ve built a tremendously socially interdependent culture. Our freedoms are collective freedoms that we can each enjoy, not individual freedoms that we each possess. Wielding selfishly one’s right to freedom is getting something for nothing. If you’re not sharing then you’re taking away and that creates inequality. Wait, but that’s supposed to be something we’re free from.