A user writes "The US House of Representatives passed a bill that imposes fines on the use of Spyware by a majority of 399-1. This bill excludes programs used by the FBI or spy agencies, though."

martensitic writes "Physics Today (the 50-year-old monthly publication of the American Institute of Physics) continues their election-year tradition with this special report, posing nine questions 'in an effort to get the candidates to specifically address questions of interest to the science community'. The 'sometimes direct and sometimes vague' written responses 'show fundamental differences on several key issues.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Received a link to SixDegreesOfVoting.com that is a new take on the Registration drive concept. From the Manifesto: 'if we make sure everyone we know is voting, and they make sure everyone they know is voting, and so on, wouldn't everyone be voting?' Match it with a nice flash map showing linked signups, it looks pretty cool (albeit leaning solidly to the left right now)."

ramoth4 writes "Local Crawford, TX (Bush's adopted hometown) paper The Lone Star Iconoclast has endorsed John Kerry for president. Kerry's home paper, the Boston Globe, hasn't come out with an endorsement yet. It's a very interesting editorial, especially in light of Bush's performance in the first debate."

An anonymous reader writes "This phone-enabled, java-app, Red | Blue, allows the user to identify the political leanings of their current location. "By taking your current location, and finding the nearest individual donors of campaign funds from the publicly available data from the Federal Elections Commission, red | blue is able to provide you an accurate reading of the political leanings of your surroundings -- red for Republican or blue for Democrat.""

Quite a few of the submitted questions were generated by Slashdot readers, and your moderations and comments helped select the 25 semi-finalists. There's only one step remaining in the process: Voting on the the final 12 questions that will be submitted to the candidates, which must be done on the New Voters Project Presidential Youth Debate site by noon Eastern Time on October 5. Note that Slashdot readers are the only members of the moderation panel providing "...nominations from an entire community." We'll post the answers from Bush, Kerry, and Nader (who was added after the process began) on October 12.

An anonymous reader writes "This New York Times article reports that in 2002, the Bush Administration's assertions that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program were based on evidence that was doubted by the government's foremost nuclear security experts. Specifically, aluminum tubes most likely meant for small artillery rockets were interpreted by the administration as parts for uranium centrifuges." In a nutshell: while Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were announcing to the American public that these tubes were slam-dunk evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions, they already knew that there was completely overwhelming evidence that the tubes were just for artillery rockets (as Iraq said) and that the tubes were totally unsuitable for use in centrifuges.

Makoto916 writes "CNN.com has an article on how both campaigns are speculating on what the so called "October Surprise" is going to be. From the capture of Bin Laden, to the economy falling through the floor, just about everything is considered. "

Trillian_1138 writes "I just finished hammering out a quick analyzation of the US 2000 Presidential Election and thought Slashdot might find it interesting. Specifically, what if all states had used a proportional assignment of electoral votes, in stead of the present all-or-nothing assignment most states use? Well, here's what I found. In the end, if every state had assigned their electoral votes in a proportional fashion, Bush would have defeated Gore in 2000, 259.008 to 253.077. The system I used allowed for percentages of votes, which is very unlikely to happen, but I still think the results are interesting. Check it out, and please let me know what you think. I'm not sure if having the electoral college AND proportional assignment of votes defeats the intention of the Electoral College in the first place, and the current Electoral College system does ensure one candidate must win a majority of Electoral votes, which the system I made would fail to meet. Oh well..."

An anonymous reader writes "David Cobb talked about Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) as the best choice in electoral methods in his interview here, but is it really? The folks over at electionmethods.org seem to think it isn't. They favor Condorcet voting, which is another ranking style method using simulated one on one elections. Here is an evaluation of various methods, including IRV and Condorcet."

DesScorp writes "The Washington State offices of the Bush campaign were burglarized, and computers with sensitive campaign data were stolen. The computers belonged the executive director and officer in charge of the 'get out the vote' campaign; one was set to be delivered to another office within the state. The staff says that secret strategy information and voting data are on the computers, and ironically, they're comparing it to Watergate. The staff blames Democratic Party activists intent on stealing the information. Of course, they deny this."

More Trouble writes "The Michigan Absentee Ballot seems to be very 'confusing', a la the infamous Palm Beach, Florida Butterfly Ballot. Help!"

oddlyenough writes "I've been helping to launch IPac, a new political action committee that works on IP policy and technical innovation. We're supporting six candidates in the current election, including a Senate candidate (Brad Carson) who says he's in the "Lessig School" when it comes to IP. You can check them out and donate here. We started this IPac because despite all of the wonderful, important work of groups like EFF, Public Knowledge, et. al, there wasn't a way to funnel the energy they create into the electoral process. You can read some coverage on us here."

On the heels of the first debate, many thanks to the anonymous reader who alerted us to these political games. CNet has an article up about a Vietnam game where you can ride with Kerry on the swift boat. Another more well known game covers the actual presidential race this year. Called "The Political Machine", it allows you to manage political campaigns on the road to office. For silliness, you can't beat Bush vs. Kerry Boxing.

Repran writes "The Guardian reports that politicians, industry leaders and environment groups across the world welcomed the news last night that Russia had rejuvenated international efforts to combat climate change by ratifying the Kyoto protocol."

bscience writes "I just arrived at the 4th annual Gnomedex conference kicking off this weekend in Lake Tahoe, California. Thursday night began the Geek Convention with a room packed full of bloggers watching and writing about the presidential debate. Friday and Saturday bring Woz, Wheaton, Pirillo and an entire cast of alpha geeks reporting in every chance they can."

Jeremiah Cornelius writes "In a letter to the White House, a leading US Senate Democrat, Diane Feinstein, expressed 'profound dismay' that the White House allegedly wrote a large portion of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's speech to Congress last week. 'His speech gave me hope that reconstruction efforts were proceeding in most of the country and that elections could be held on schedule. To learn that this was not an independent view, but one that was massaged by your campaign operatives, jaundices the speech and reduces the credibility of his remarks.'"

ancice writes "Article by Wired. Seems like Bush and Kerry are going to battle in cyberspace. The Bush Team is going to have a War Room to provide live rebuttals to thousands of conversative blogs. Not much info on Kerry's response though. This seems like a good use of the Information Super Highway. Would be interesting to see how this War Room will affect the election. Will this tactic be successful or will it be information overload? Worse still, will technology be exploited? Tune in on Thursday."

deezl writes "Michael Moore released a controversial movie revealing 'facts' about the Bush Presidency. A new rebuttal has just been released called Celsius 41.11. I would think that time sensitive political commentaries would be available for download to ensure the widest possible distribution base. If documentary makers are so interested in getting their message out and arguments across, why not encourage free BitTorrent type distribution for their movies?"

cft_128 writes "David S. Bennahum of has an article that breaks down the numbers in the electoral college, backing up his original 'One Voter One Vote' talk (listen to the mp4). In summary, a vote in Wyoming (has the smallest number of voters per elector) is worth 2.6 votes in Pennsylvania (has the largest number of voters per elector). He has some PDFs of charts, an outline of the talk and a spreadsheet."