What are you swinging for this November 3rd? We ask because those we choose to lead in the November 3 election, be they local or national, will face a host of hardships for which solutions must be found. Technology for better or worse sits at the center one way or another of a host of issues, including election security (hackable voting machines and databases), fake news, echo chamber information silos and the like. As reported by Ed Yong in a recent Atlantic article, America is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral, the United States has a technology habit and to this end, technologies are often employed that end up circumventing a given problem but never tackle its root cause head on. Over the next few weeks, our guest authors are sharing their thoughts/concerns surrounding the upcoming election, the biggest problem they hope will be addressed head-on in the coming year and whether they believe technology can be of service in some fashion or not. We are thankful for their sincerity!
Election Concerns—Many Voices
What Are You Swinging for This November 3rd?
By Eliza Haburay-Herrling, Jacob Hobbie and Brooks Kennedy
Eliza Haburay-Herrling is an educator currently living with her fiancé and their cat in Brooklyn, NY. She majored in Environmental Studies at Oberlin College.
I’ll be frank - this year has been alternately terrifying and numbing, and humbling in its relentlessness. Raised on science fiction, I always hoped we’d strive for the technologically-advanced future of Star Trek rather than other, more dystopian, worlds. But it’s become clear that science no longer serves as a tether or guiding principle for societal progress; the anti-intellectualism noted by Isaac Asimov in 1980 has not slowed - it’s grown tenfold. This “cult of ignorance,” combined with the uniquely American individualist mindset, means our nation has lost the drive to collaborate, to prioritize community-based approaches, to strive for collective improvement. The pandemic laid bare our nation’s faults, emphasizing what I will be fighting for in this election: centering science, critical thinking, and empathy in education; addressing institutionalized injustices; and demanding accountability from politicians and corporate interests to address root causes, rather than distracting us with shiny cure-alls. — Eliza Haburay-Herrling
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I’m voting this November because I believe that problems must be addressed at both the symptom and the cause. Currently, we’re suffering through a global pandemic, an expansion of domestic militarization and violence targeting citizens, and an economic crisis, three heavily interlinked problems. The way to address all three is fundamentally simple: care for and protect people. We need a national mask mandate. We need to come to terms with the ingrained racism and biases written into every aspect of our lives, and push for reconciliation and rectification. We need to understand that ensuring the welfare of individuals ensures the welfare of our society. Voting is not a panacea; I do not believe that a particular candidate will solve all woes. But not voting is an abdication of our duty to our fellow humans, and cedes power to those who would deny us our voice. — Jacob Hobbie
Jacob Hobbie is a software engineer at Google and the grandson of a member of the LWV, Falmouth chapter.
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Brooks Kennedy is a junior at Washington University in St. Louis, majoring in computer science.
There is a prevalent dichotomy of thought surrounding the harms and benefits of technology in politics: either it has allowed for the spread of valuable information that educates voters and promotes a productive dialogue, or malicious bots and database hackers are compromising democracy as we know it. There is nothing inherently malicious about tech; rather, it reflects the biases of its users and its engineers, so yes, there are bots that force vengeful hashtags to trend, but there are also sites that provide easily accessible information to voters and there are databases that better organize census data to prevent the disenfranchisement of marginalized groups. AI (artificial intelligence) is extremely powerful and its abilities are expanding rapidly, but the biases in the decisions that it makes still come from the data that it learns from; data collected by and from humans. The algorithms themselves should not be anthropomorphized. My biggest concern with the upcoming election is the spread of misinformation that may compromise the ability of voters to make an appropriate choice, but that concern is not rooted in technology; it is a concern about the humans that run our political system, the humans who actively manipulate others to advance their own interests; technology is merely a tool that these individuals use to further goals that they would work towards regardless. Just as it can be used for harm, I have complete faith in technology as a tool to fight some of the most pressing issues we face, so long as the politicians, scientists and software engineers backing these fights have the drive to leverage data for good. — Brooks Kennedy
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