Voters aged 18-25 under-represented in political polls

An article at Newsday.com states that current National Political Polling practices are a sham. The reason:

Polls only count people who have land lines. An overwhelming majority of citizens under the age of 25 no longer have landlines, instead relying on cell phones. The result: Current polling practices are completely biased, since they significantly under-represent a key demographic, voters aged 18-25, in their results. The majority of young voters favor Kerry, who is under-represented in current polls.

The article concludes by stating that polls are a complete fraud and should not be used in any way. Eventually, a case is made for a switch to on-line polling, which cannot currently be used since that would again represent a skewed portion of the demographic.

For an interesting daily look at election predictions, see this site:

http://www.electoral-vote.com/

If you click on th "Previous Report" button, you can see a day-to-day breakdown of predictions. Below are the most recent results. It's crazy to see how much day-to-day fluctuation there is in daily polling results. Some constants: Kerry always takes California, New York, and Michigan. Bush always takes Texas, and the entire mid-section of the United States (Outside of New Mexico and Colorado) The West Coast, and the Northeast are generally blue, and the rest of the country is red.

Today: Bush 331 Kerry 207
Sept 18th: Bush 327 Kerry 211
Sept 17th: Bush 307 Kerry 211
Sept 16th: Bush 311 Kerry 223
Sept 15th: Bush 296 Kerry 238
Sept 14th: Bush 291 Kerry 238
Sept 13th: Kerry 269 Bush 233
Sept 12th: Kerry 273 Bush 233
Sept 11th: Kerry 273 Bush 233
Sept 10th: Bush 254 Kerry 252

Letter to Michael Moore

This content was originally posted in a forum from The Corporation's website a couple weeks ago.

I just sent this email to Michael Moore. Since my aim is simply to get the ideas I discussed in my blog out in the general public, I thought I would post the email in here as well:

Dear Michael Moore,

I watched "The Corporation" over the weekend, and was, to put it shortly, quite moved. I have been blogging about many of the subjects touched in this movie, and was amazed to see how closely this movie mirrored some of my topics. I believe the key issues our country currently faces include:

• Developing a sustainable economy- reducing our dependence on non-renewable resources, eliminating waste, pollution
• Providing a basic level of care for all members of society, including basic health care, food, and shelter
  

At the end of "The Corporation", you challenged your viewers to respond to the facts presented during the movie. In a recent blog, Improving Democracy, I put together some ideas on how we can begin to improve on the basic premises of democracy through the use of technology.

With the advent of the Open Source Movement, I believe we know have the technology in our hands to provide an online voting, blogging, and metamoderation system capable of providing a stronger voice to the average citizen. I'll spare you the details here, but if you have chance, I recommend you take the time to read this blog. I have taken the time to try and address the major hurdles that the system would need to overcome. I sincerely believe that such an open source project would provide a great benefit to our society.

If you are interested in what you see, I also recommend that you take a look at Slashdot, which is an online forum for discussing technical issues (Tagline: News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters) Slashdot has a highly active, very opinionated user base with a wide spectrum of views on all manner of subjects. The users of Slashdot have amazingly varied political views and beliefs, and it is great to read the discussions to see arguments from different perspectives.

A brief list of political subjects recently discussed on Slashdot:

• Moore Approves Fahrenheit 9/11 Downloads
  
• Fahrenheit 9/11 Discussion
  
• US Gov't Representatives - Who's Who?
  
• Online Voting - Will it Work?
  
• Do Geeks Have a Political voice?
  

To get back to the main point of this email - If you read my blog and happen to be interested in the subject, I recommend that you contact the users of Slashdot to get further input on the subject. If you contact the editors of Slashdot directly, I'm sure they wouldn't mind having you post a few questions in a post to their "Ask Slashdot" section.

The fact is, Michael, that you have a unique voice here in America, and I believe that you ask a lot of the questions that need to be heard.

Thanks very much your time,

Mark Heimonen

The Corporation

If you see one movie this year, make it the The Corporation. The film examines the corporation's role as today's dominant institution, and the far-reaching impact corporations have on our society.

Of all the films I have watched this year, the three most interesting and memorable where all documentaries. These three movies are The Corporation, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Super Size Me. Throw in Control Room into the mix, and you have a pretty exicting race for next year's best documentary feature at the Academy Awards.

Rather than review the movie here, I will re-direct you to a couple sites dedicated to this task:

IMDB, which currently has The Corporation rated at 8.5.

Rotten Tomatoes, which lists the Corporation as 93% fresh.

Here is a write-up by A.O Scott from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Personally, I rate this documentary as the most important movie to be released in our generation. Similar in impact to Fahrenheit 9/11, the most important role this film can play is to raise awareness of the important issues our society faces.

codeBehind

I just started a new blog, entitled codeBehind, which will primarily discuss coding and development issues. I'm primarily a .NET developer, and this blog will spend plenty of time discussing betas of upcoming Microsoft Products, such as Whidbey (Visual Studio .NET 2005), Yukon (Sql Server 2005), and Longhorn (Microsoft's next generation operating system).