User:Mervitan/sandbox

Article Evaluation ("Issue Advocacy Ads")

 * Everything in the article does seem very relevant to the topic that it claims to talk about, which is Issue Advocacy Ads
 * The article seems to be very neutral overall and simply meant to educate about the different types of issue advocacy ads that we can see in politics
 * It was broken down into three sections where they spoke about two different types of advocacy (Interest & Express) and the history of Issue Advocacy.
 * I think the History section is very broad and covers both significant court cases that impacted the limitations on the ads and different rules (such as the bright-line rule) that was implemented.
 * Each of the court cases and rules has been properly cited with links to mostly the Wikipedia Article that goes more in depth about the article.
 * However, at the end of each sentence, there is also a link to an external source that talks about the case and the specific detail mentioned in the sentence prior.
 * Only the section at the bottom seems to give a little bit more of a bias as it is titled "Disclosure requirements" and talks about different court cases that are seen that talking about limitations to Issue Advocacy ads
 * Both of the court cases were from 2010 though, which has now been almost 9 years ago
 * Additionally, in the history section, there seems to only be information up to 2010, which may represent a need to provide more updated information with perhaps more recent cases or news with the more recent elections (especially the past controversial election with Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton)
 * All the key words in the article have been linked & cited either to an external source or another wikipedia article

Link to the Talk Page where I made changes: Talk:Issue advocacy ads

Possible Articles to Work On
When I first started scanning some possible articles to edit, I stumbled upon a few that were interesting and related to civic technology. These included Demon Sheep, Quadratic voting (which could be a possible conflict of interest as I was able to hear Agatha Bacelar speak up in support of it for her campaign during class), Delagative Democracy, Data Propria, and Politics and Technology.

All of these articles caught my eye and when I was exploring for more articles to write about, and the names of the articles were very engaging. However, when I was further investigating each of these articles, I noticed that the articles were very short and had a lot of potential to expand. Therefore, I narrowed down my search to two main articles that could be edited.


 * 1) Politics and Technology - I think this article surprised the most with its short length as I felt like there were a lot of connections between the political and technology sphere that were not touched upon. There were a lot of topics linked at the bottom of the article, in the "See also" section that linked a lot of different articles, but I think more of the connections could have been elaborated within the article. I think the article could have targeted more of the up and coming digital age have caused a lot of changes within the elections and modern political sphere, such as the concept of Quadratic voting or voting via smart phones on an app. Agatha Bacelar speaks about "Liquid Democracy" through an app called Referenda, and I am sure there are other apps in the works that are planning on allowing people to vote a lot easier to encourage a higher voter turnout. Additionally, technology plays a huge role in campaigning and corruption with recent interference with the most recent Trump election from Russia via technology hacks. I believe this article has a lot of potential to grow, which is actually touched upon in the introduction of the article, but not much after.
 * 2) Delagative Democracy - This was another article that I saw huge potential to grow and expand on concepts on. I stumbled upon this article when I was exploring Liquid Democracy and noticed how the article for Delagative Democracy was significantly shorter than Liquid Democracy. It only touches briefly upon the history and two countries where it was implemented, Argentina and the Russian Federation. When doing basic research on the topic, I had already stumbled upon a 17 page report from the Kellog Institute for International Studies, so I know there is more information to be uncovered on the topic and be added to the very brief Wikipedia Article.

Politics and Technology
For my final article that I have decided to edit, I have decided on the topic of Politics and Technology. After listening to speakers in our class speak on both sides of how technology can both benefit politics from Agatha Bacelar and how technology has repeated damaged politics from Barbara Simons, it inspired to me to edit this article as I believe that there is so much that can be spoken about in this article that has not been expanded upon by previous authors. Like mentioned before, I can speak about the different kinds of voting offered through technology, such as Quadratic voting, and also speak about the different political apps that we analyzed in class, such as PopVox, CloakRoom, or Councilmatic. Listening to how Marci Harris utilized technology and an app to make politics more accessible to those that may not be as familiar with the political sphere inspired me to add more to this particular Wikipedia article. Technology has grown (whether we like it or not) to play an integral role in politics, whether that is through voting, campaigning, or just basic awareness, and I believe that this article in particular should be edited to be a stronger article to reflect those rapid changes. Congress was unable to keep up with a lot of the technological advancements of current day, which lead to the Facebook case that was seen everywhere on national news. There is constant threat of misinformation spreading in the political sphere. Blockchain technology is slowly rising to play a bigger and bigger role in keeping information secure and decentralizing information in politics.

When looking at the Talk page of the article, I could see that it was extremely bare with only two comments that just included links to sources that could be relevant to the article, which shows that not many people have attempted to edit it. It may not be a site that is often visited.

Possible sources to speak about from my bibliography:


 * 1) "Technology, Innovation and Politics led by Sonal Shah". The Institute of Politics at Harvard University. Retrieved 2019-10-02.
 * 2) Armstrong, Paul. "How Technology Is Really Going To Change Politics In The Next 20 Years". Forbes. Retrieved 2019-10-02.
 * 3) McKinney, Sarah. "The Future Of Political Engagement Is Here (And It's Called POPVOX)". Forbes. Retrieved 2019-10-02.
 * 4) "Colorado Tried a New Way to Vote: Make People Pay—Quadratically". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2019-10-02.
 * 5) Stevens, Matt (2019-10-01). "Zuckerberg Hates Warren's Plan to Break Up Facebook. She Doesn't Care". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-10-02.
 * 6) Newhauser, Daniel (2019-06-13). "This 27-Year-Old Wants To Lead A Progressive Rebellion to Take Down Nancy Pelosi". Vice. Retrieved 2019-10-02.

Contribution Draft
Lead

There are also a wide variety of online tools that are meant to promote political participation and combat the spread of misinformation. A comparison chart of civic technology platforms can be useful in differentiating the different services offered by each platform.

Presence of Online Tools for Political Participation

With the increasing use of technology in the political sphere, many new platforms have emerged in an attempt to provide unbiased information to the general public in a manner that is easy access to all. The idea of spreading unbiased information has become a popular platform for many apps to get started on. Many of these apps hope to be able to spread this information so that voters may be more educated about the political sphere and make more of an informed decision when voting. Some more examples include Liquid.us, Countable, Capitol Bells , Fiscalnote , and Councilmatic. Technology is progressing rapidly to making a significant impact on our future campaigns.

An example of this is PopVox, as they provide a holistic view of every bill and resolution that has passed or is currently in discussion with our government. Popvox also provides a platform for voters to share their opinions on different bills being discussed in Congress at the moment, and from the start of the app over 350,000 people have used the app from across the country to share their opinions on bills and become more informed.

iSideWith is an application that seeks to provide voters with a more educated guess of who they would politically side with. They have an in-depth survey on their website that asks about the users’ political opinion on common issues discussed or debated within the government currently to give the voter a ranking of which politician best aligns with what stance they have on the current political sphere. This gives voters more of an educated guess of who they should be casting their vote for. The more time the voters spend filling out the survey, the more accurate the results will align with their political stance.

Change.org is a website that allows for people to take a stance on something they agree or disagree with and actually petition for others to rally behind their cause. People can search up petitions that have been started already concerning a cause that they may feel strongly about or they have the option of starting their own. The website displays past successful petitions that have made an impact and the petition does not necessarily have to be related to politics as well. There are many different surveys started by different people that could just be targeting different issues within their neighborhood but can range up to a social issue that they believe the whole world should be aware about.

D21 is a platform that allows people to participate in voting on issues through a form of “modern democracy.” It is also known as the Janeček Method which allows people to cast both a negative and a positive vote. They wish to inform users more accurately about different issues happening within their community and provide them with a platform for them to be able to voice their opinions on. This is a platform that is used mainly in the Czech Republic to target corruption within the Czech government. Though it has not yet been used in any general elections, the Janeček Method has been used in several participatory budgeting programs around the world, including New York City in the United States. The Czech government introduced the game Prezident 21 which is an interactive website created to aid people in familiarizing themselves with the D21 system.

Verified Voting

Verified Voting is a website uses its online presence to discourage the movement of voting towards the more digital age. Specifically having a section about Internet Voting, they speak about the dangers and information leaks that come with using the internet or anything digital to cast votes, even with blockchain. Verified Voting defines internet voting to even include email or fax voting or any voting through an online portal. This is due to the fact that any form of electronic voting can cause the vote to be susceptible to a large number of security threats including cyber-attacks that can skew voting results and preferences. According to NIST, it is difficult to make sure that votes are coming from verified and registered voters and it has not been changed in transit. This is difficult to verify over the internet and thus makes casting votes in person and through paper ballets more effective and safe, even with the flaws that it may have.

Response to peer reviews
Brusso7 Peer Review:

Thank you for taking the time to look over my work!

Lead: I can edit my paragraphs to be more concise.

Content: Also, I can add more information to the Verified Voting section of my edits by doing more research on current news topics.

Tone and Balance: I will continue to simply present facts and not have bias in my work

Organization: I will probably add more sections to the piece and keep it organized with section headings

Overall: I can improve upon my vocabulary used and maybe talk about a few other apps in the political sphere.

Maxack37 Peer Review:

Thanks for critiquing my work so closely and spotting some problems I need to fix.

Lead: I will edit my lead to be more encompassing and summarize what I am planning on talking about.

Content: I will continue adding relevant content and possibly expand on some of the ideas I included in this article.

Tone: I will edit my grammar in the first sentence of Verified Voting and avoid using phrases like "many of these apps hope to be able to" when I speak about the apps.

Organization: Same comment as above.

Overalll: I will edit my work to be less biased and pay closer attention to grammar.