Ecclesiastical and technological voting guides
During election years, churches regularly provide voting guides to help remind Christian candidates of moral issues that imply certain political platforms. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops produces one that typically gets some media attention. The National Council of Churches also produces a voting guide, which I had never seen before.
Last week, the Washington Post delivered a digital voting guide that sketched the technology policies of each candidate. John McCain and Hillary Clinton have no articulated policy and, unsurprisingly, Ron Paul feels the federal government ought not have a policy on principle. Mike Huckabee seems to have a muddled but positive policy supporting net neutrality.
Barack Obama seems to have the fullest technology policy and has gone out of his way to speak at Google.
Also, Meta Filter provides a list of the web server software that the candidates are running. Of the presently-running candidates, only Obama and Paul are completely using Free Software. McCain and Huckabee run hybrid proprietary and free systems. Clinton runs all-proprietary.
I’m not expecting the NCC or the USCCB to add this to their voting guides anytime soon. However, technology presents moral issues to which Christian voters ought attend. Supporting free software, net neutrality and opposing telecom immunity would be among these.
February 9, 2008 at 9:06 pm
According to the demographics, I should be voting for Hillary Clinton: I’m a white, 60-year-old, highly educated woman from the Northeast. But I’m voting for Obama. I’ve waited all my life for a viable woman candidate for the presidency, but this is not the right woman. I want a woman of the highest ability and virtue, who would serve as a glorious role model to all young women. Hillary Clinton is not that woman.
She rode into power with her husband, and together they’ve acquired a long and seriously flawed history of self-serving and secretive financial and political dealings. The most cursory research will prove that true. She started out her political life supporting the racist Barry Goldwater. She is as comfortable with deception and trickery as George Bush. When I hear woman saying, “Oh, but that’s how you get things done in Washington,” I literally cringe.
I am passionately supporting Barack Obama. He can beat the Republicans; she cannot. Obama has attracted Independents and even Republicans to his camp, and in a general election they would vote for him, but not for Clinton. Clinton voted for the war, and has never apologized for it. Obama has spoken out against it from the beginning. Obama brings us hope–and not just that. Take a serious look at his ideas and experience.
Please, I beg of you, Sisters young and old: wait for the right woman. Then we can be proud.
Diane Wald
February 9, 2008 at 9:27 pm
My simple view of it is this: doesn’t Obama just seem smarter than the rest?
February 10, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I’m going to have to say “yes,” but, then, I’m biased!