Friday, February 10, 2012

Election Night: Cool as Christmas

November 7, 2006

The following guest entry was written by Massie Ritsch, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics.

I was one of those kids who thought Election Night was about as cool as Christmas. Technology first became part of my ritual in 1988, when I was 12. That night in November, I decided to count up electoral votes as Peter Jennings declared states going for George H.W. Bush or Michael Dukakis.

So, using a World Almanac (printed on paper) and my IBM PC XT, I typed out every state’s name and printed the list on my dot-matrix printer. To figure out the Electoral College permutations, there was no online tracker in red and blue. If Peter wasn’t talking about a race that interested me, I couldn’t click around.

Another toy I didn’t have was OpenSecrets.org, the money-in-politics Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics, where I now work. Eighteen years after that election and 23 since the Center’s founding, technology has allowed “following the money” to become a mainstay of political reporting. Unless you’re still running on an IBM XT.

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Juliana Gruenwald has been covering tech and telecom issues for more than a decade for National Journal, Interactive Week, BNA and Congressional Quarterly. This is her second stint with National Journal. She was recruited by NJ in 1998 to help launch its first tech policy publication, Technology Daily. She left in 2000 to cover international tech and telecom issues for Ziff Davis Media's Interactive Week magazine. She started her career at United Press International as the wire service's first Helen Thomas Intern. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota. A Minneapolis native, she misses the lakes but not the cold.


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