Our series of podcasts and interviews with the 2008 presidential candidates continue – so far we’ve spoken to Barack Obama, John McCain, John Edwards, Mitt Romney and Mike Gravel. We are in active scheduling discussions with all of the remaining candidates.
Now it’s time to endorse a candidate from each party as having the most interesting and effective positions on technology issues.
We no longer live in an industrial economy – the future is information and the Internet. Our president must carefully consider her or his policies on key tech issues, something they’ve never really had to do before. What is their position on net neutrality? How will they bridge the digital divide? How do we handle technology sales to China and other countries using that technology to perpetrate human rights abuses? Should the Internet be taxed? How do we curb identity theft on the Internet? What is the future of intellectual property protection? How do we handle immigration issues for tech workers? How do we catch up with the rest of the world in the mobile Internet space? And what will we do to encourage research and productization in renewable energy?
These are issues that get little attention from mainstream press (with the exception of renewable energy policies), but we think that they deserve to be considered as part of this election. Technology workers in Silicon Valley and elsewhere tend to donate a lot of money and time to campaigns, and they are more frequent voters than the average cititzen. The candidate’s positions on technology and related issues impact how they spend their time, money and votes.
Please help us choose two candidates to endorse in advance of Super Tuesday. See how each candidate falls on the issues, and vote for who you think would make the best Tech President, at primaries.techcrunch.com. And thanks to webreakstuff for building out the site for us.
We announced this yesterday to some major media outlets and got a great response. I was interviewed by ABC News (clip above) to talk about the podcasts and the endorsement yesterday. Today I spoke on Fox News as well (the clip will be up shortly). You can also read ABC’s coverage here.
Note that some of the campaigns (particularly Ron Paul) picked up on this yesterday from ABC’s coverage and started talking to their constituents about it. So some of the early results are skewed heavily towards those candidates. I expect over the next few days for the results to become more normalized.
ooo I’m first. In the words of Oprah – it’s Obammmaaaaaaaaaa time
hahaha
Ron Paul, obviously – he’s leading them all in terms of using the Internet as a tool for his campaign.
Any online presidential poll is simply an exercise in seeing how much Ron Paul’s supporters can spaz out again.
Duh….
it’s Al Gore (as a write in)
who you do think invented the Internet
Huckabee had the most viral YouTube video
http://youtube....h?v=hfpThfllQGo
and he’s gonna win the whole thing – why don’t you interview him?
At a minimum there should be one vote per ip address. Past contests and sweeps I’ve run with millions of entries shows that one vote per day will clearly make the voting not worth much.
Good interview.
*snicker* Huckabee’s gonna win the whole thing?
But great idea and love seeing the TC coverage!
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Ditto on Gore, he did invent the internet. Clinton only sent one email. Lets see, maybe the next president can actually be in the 21st century with us? This will be interesting to continue to follow from a tech standpoint. Guy could open up another frequency for google to buy, give free frequency to all, give more tax credits/coupons (like with dtv), etc… This could be big.
Great idea Michael – it’ll be interesting to see how the whole thing plays out over the coming year.
My main question is: Why in this day and age is there not a ‘person in charge of Tech’ in the Cabinet?
There must be so much duplication across government depts and also plain customer-doesn’t-know-what-we’re-talking-about-lets-over-charge-edness from suppliers, that someone in charge of all tech decisions would surely make a big difference.
I know that such a position would have been extremely useful in the UK recently where they’ve had a couple of crises where huge amounts of personal data have gone missing from government agencies and the National Health service’s new computer system is years late.
Please endorse Ron Paul. Less government mean more innovation and a healthy economy. Ron Paul is the only candidate that understand economics the experience to rightfully restore power back to the people, as individuals.
honestly if the internet – votes in this election – it could change america –
The results are nuts! – 2,900 – to like 600 ? heh Ron paul is good
I don’t trust visionary utopiasts that babble on about how “they’re going to use technology to improve our world.” That’s best left to entrepreneuers and the free market, not to politicians. So, which of the candidates is most likely to let the free market do its thing….probably Ron Paul. But then Paul probably isn’t electable given that voters don’t seem to like small government libertarians. So my next choice would be Romney.
For clarification are the answers to the questions for each candidate what they supplied to TC or are they pulled from the candidate site and pasted in? I am concerned that so many were left NA.
No point in ever putting a poll online; it’ll just sway dramatically towards Dr. Ron Paul.
That said, if you’re not voting for Ron Paul in 2008 you need to earnestly review your stance. Save for Dennis Kucinich, no other candidate is capable of leading this country.
#15 – Useful Concept: These are positions that we’ve pulled in from around the web; if you can help fill out any of the N/A’s, please let us know.
Gosh, finally I can know who Techcrunch prefers for president! I go to them for all my political information needs! Now that this is over, I can go over to the knitting-bee forums and see who they recommend as a pro-crafts candidate.
Hold on a second, have TC voters even read the candidate facts?
Ron Paul has over 80% of the votes but his techonolgy policies hardly match what many in the tech world beleive.
This is an example of the problem with our society and voting. We vote for the “popular” candidate, not the most qualified.
…and as a disclosure I am a very conservative republican but am open minded enough to recognize that on technology issues most republicans are WAY off base.
DECIDE WITH YOUR MINDS PEOPLE!!!!!!
There’s no point in even continuing the poll if Ron Paul supporters won’t relax. I wish there was a way to do accurate online polling, but as long as they bum rush every poll, it’s hopeless. Good luck with your hope that the poll results will normalize, but it’ll never happen.
I am still undecided and I have been looking at each candiates. What worries me is that on the Federal level, there will be a series of rules and policy that could hinder or help technological innovation. My first question came to mind, “Why set policy if you let free will spur technological advancement?”
The candiate that I think is the least restrictive is Ron Paul. I know some of you might complain that Ron Paul is being mentioned, blah blah. I have looked at each of them hard and tried to reason with myself who would be the best candiate for the current and future issues that is happening in this world.
I believe Ron Paul translates into less government, less control, and he constantly says…the only thing that the Federal Government dicates policy is at the Federal level, otherwise everything is up to the state level.
Then again, I am still undecided… you asked me who would be the best person to spur technological innovation.. its Ron Paul, less limitation and less policy.
Your polls are normalized.
Your poll is not calling ONLY the few for war, far right republicans that voted in last years primaries. Those polls usually only call republicans who voted in the republican primaries last year. They do not include democrats like me who jumped to vote for Ron Paul. Or independants. Constitution Party. Libertarians. Etc. Etc. THOSE ARE THE POLLS THAT ARE NOT NORMALIZED.
Come on. Do you really think only 5 in 100 are going to vote for Ron Paul. Or even 10 in 100?
Your polls are likely a LOT more normalized.
YOUR POLLS ARE MORE NORMALIZED!!
Your poll is not calling ONLY the few for war, far right republicans that voted in last years primaries. Those polls usually only call republicans who voted in the republican primaries last year. They do not include democrats like me who jumped to vote for Ron Paul. Or independants. Constitution Party. Libertarians. Etc. Etc. THOSE ARE THE POLLS THAT ARE NOT NORMALIZED.
Come on. Do you really think only 5 in 100 are going to vote for Ron Paul. Or even 10 in 100?
Your polls are likely a LOT more normalized.
Really looking forward to the Ron Paul interview.
Ron Paul hands down. Who else is the president of the internet.
#20
“There’s no point in even continuing the poll if Ron Paul supporters won’t relax.”
Yeah. Relax RP supporters. Stop being so pro your candidate. Stop showing your support and voting. What is wrong with you nutty people. Showing so much love and support for a presidential candidate. Sheesh.
“Good luck with your hope that the poll results will normalize, but it’ll never happen”
See post 23.
There are ways to do accurate online polling if you’re not lazy. At a minimum, they can check for unique IPs.
Do you really think that the Ron Paul votes came because somebody in the campaign asked its constituents to come here and vote? You really don’t get it.
Michael,
What exactly do you hope to accomplish with this poll? That the tech guys are for Kucinich and Paul?
So you will end up in effect creating this years version of the Literary Digest poll of 1936?
If you bother to Google it you will find out that was the end of the Literary Digest. Far better to take polls on issues of actual interest to the tech community.
After writing my last comment I just noticed that Paul is currently at 3,060 votes, and the next Republican has 285. And you “expect over the next few days for the results to become more normalized.” Just what do you think normalized will look like? How many people will have to take that poll before Paul is not in first any more. I’ve got bad news for you, as it gets more “normalized,” his lead will only get bigger.
hay guise we won another online poll w00t w00t
after i finish my math homework and watching v for vendetta i will build another bot that will get ron paul stories on the front page of digg 1,000 times a day
“Do you really think that the Ron Paul votes came because somebody in the campaign asked its constituents to come here and vote? You really don’t get it.”
seriously guys it’s about our passion for the return of the gold standard, eliminating the dept of education and making sure the TRUTH about 9/11 is told
RON PAUL AND FREE COINAGE OF SILVER 4EVA!!!
I love technology, but I believe there are many other important reasons to endorse a candidate. Technology is not the answer to the problems in our society. Although it is good for guys like us, it is a very low priority with respect to electing a president. I didn’t know how selfish TechCrunch and the readers here could be until now. The problem here is that everyone is for themselves instead of the real issues that matter. I guess nobody here has ever had to struggle. Many, many people are struggling and all you guys care about in a president is how he/she will handle technology. I hope I am seeing this in the wrong perspective.
yeah, Eric, I am sure that the fact Kucinich is leading the dem polling really reflects reality.
As soon as the Internet candidate teams learn about something like this, they flood the site.
Ron Paul’s internet numbers won’t be reflected in the real polling.
They should do the exact same thing that’s gotten the Internet where it is today:
LEAVE IT ALONE
In that list of ‘how will we’ do such-and-such, how many are actually a legitimate function of the federal government? We should not be asking for intervention, we should be praying it never comes. DUMB.
Seriously though, I didn’t know that the Ron Paul campaign asked people to come to TechCrunch to vote… actually, the only correspondance I’ve ever gotten from the official campaign was “Thank you for your generous donation…” and Ron’s cheerleading emails. More likely you meant that someone in the grassroots campaign suggested that people come vote, which is entirely different.
If RP doesn’t win the nom, I’ll vote Obama. If Obama doesn’t win either… I’ll write in Ron Paul. Regardless of the final election outcome, Dr. Paul has accomplished something that innumerable other candidates couldn’t, wake up, and inspire the assembly of young, tech savvy, and politically fatigued voters. It’s not the candidate, it’s not the internet, it’s the message.
It’s bound to be a movement that will have a lasting effect on the political process for some generations.
I think by some people’s standards, Ron Paul would not be an Tech president.
Because of this reason, which I consider a great one: He will not regulate markets, he does not want to regulate them, and he strongly opposes any regulation of them.
I’ll use the internet as my focus.
He is opposed to meddling in what he considers a private communication network. He sees this as the domain of the web companies, search companies, bandwidth companies, media content companies and the internet users.
He will not subsidize any technology unless it is directly related to defense.
If people believe that poorer people without computers or internet access need to be subsidized, or they want Net Neutraility or if they believe that legislation should exist for internet predators they won’t like Ron Paul’ views. He sees that as interference in the private market and if there is any interference, it should be at the state level and not federal.
Personally, I agree with his views. The internet shouldn’t be regulated. It is a way for all people world-wide to communicate and exchange ideas. It gives a voice and a level of interaction to people that never had before. Just as in the real world, the virtual world has its share of fools and evil people– But that does not mean we should give up our freedoms to control a bad aspect of an open society. One of the costs of liberty is that sometimes, people are going to do bad things with it.
In my book, Ron Paul IS the Tech president– Not because he is some technological marvel (he is not) but because he bests represents what I think the internet is about: Freedom.
will one of your Ron Paul followers please tell me what makes Ron Paul the candidate that a TECHNOLOGY focused blog should suppport?
I like a lot of Ron Pauls ideas and may even vote for him…but NOT becuase of his technology policy.
What makes Ron Paul a Tech President?
Support John Edwards, both Clinton and Obama are ardent proponents of outsourcing and the importation of visa workers because they are tied to the corporate elite and multinationals. Neither Clinton or Obama even bothered to come up with a plan to deal with the problems of our economy and jobs. Both Clinton and Obama would be no different than four more years of Bush.
I’m voting Edwards, I couldn’t vote for Clinton or Obama.
Ron Paul. The other candidates should be embarrassed at their own lack of knowledge when compared to Dr. Paul.
Ron Paul doesn’t stand a chance, people. He will get about 5% of the vote. Quick screwing around and support one of the electable candidates. Didn’t you learn your lesson from Ralph Nader? Paul’s supporters are good at viral marketing, but that doesn’t make him a tech president.
It’s for certain that none of these clowns will be the first tech president! There is no one worth voting for especially Hellary! Sheesh!
fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
@#38
“will one of your Ron Paul followers please tell me what makes Ron Paul the candidate that a TECHNOLOGY focused blog should suppport?
I like a lot of Ron Pauls ideas and may even vote for him…but NOT becuase of his technology policy.
What makes Ron Paul a Tech President?”
The fact that he doesn’t believe the internet should be regulated, just like he believes that your life shouldn’t be regulated either. Think about it, if they can control the internet then porn is no more. O.o
“If RP doesn’t win the nom, I’ll vote Obama. If Obama doesn’t win either… I’ll write in Ron Paul.”
Are you voting based purely on the amount of breathless internet hype a candidate can generate? It’s difficult to come up with two candidates whose policy positions differ more than Obama’s and Paul’s.
WHY RON PAUL:
The people of America cannot control what they learn on TV. Internet has changed that, with a grain of salt. Ron Paul most closely represents the users of the Internet, and he has openly stated his position to “Never tax or Regulate the internet”. The biggest potential I see for the internet, is unregulated growth. I make a living on the internet through computer code i write (independently for video games) and as of 4 months ago, the FBI drastically limited my ability to generate a decent income (via stiff gambling laws in the US). I want a president who will fight for me, and what I care about. Since my life is on the internet, the best choice hands down, Ron Paul.
Plus he want to end the war on drugs, on a federal level.
He is an inspiration.(You should hear him speak on monetary policy.)
Mike, do you visit digg? Ron Paul supporters have had their way with the site for months now. They are a dedicated bunch, and his results will without a doubt remain very skewed for the duration of TC Primaries.
Strange that the valley has a libertarian lean, and yet Obama – who, regardless as coming off as a nice guy, is politically as socialist as they come – is the leading candidate.
this is what i found…
obamaaaaaaaaa, naaaaaaaaaaaaah!
http://www.dono...oteforobama.com
Ron Paul is THE techpresident no question about it! He’s got a better record on technology-friendly and internet-friendly issues!
Ron is the one.
technology rules!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.make...or-gadget-geeks