election

Feds probe alleged hacking theft of Romney's tax returns

The U.S. Secret Service is looking into claims that someone stole presidential nominee Mitt Romney's income tax returns and is threatening to release them if he doesn't pay up.

Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie told CNET today that the agency is investigating, but had no further comment.

The claim was made in a post on the Pastebin site on Sunday that alleged that Romney's federal tax returns were taken from the offices of PriceWaterhouse Coopers in Frankin, Tenn., on August 25 by someone who snuck into the building and made copies of the document. The message … Read more

Reddit: Obama visit generates most activity ever

President Barack Obama broke all the campaigning rules when he held an unmoderated Q&A session on one of the Internet's most infamous socially aggregated new sites -- and he also broke a Reddit record.

Obama's session on Reddit yesterday attracted more user activity than any other single submission to the forum, more than even the site's front page, Reddit revealed today in a stats breakdown of the virtual visit.

By the end of the day yesterday, the site had clocked nearly 3 million page views for the submission and the number kept growing by the … Read more

Microsoft, Google folks are top sources for Obama funds

President Obama's campaign is getting financial help from people associated with two big tech firms: Microsoft and Google.

Following the University of California, those companies were listed as the second and third top contributors to his re-election campaign by OpenSecrets.org, followed by the lawfirm of DLA Piper and Harvard University.

Mitt Romney's list is a who's who of Wall Street: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Credit Suisse Group.

The money did not come from the organizations themselves, but from political action committees, individual employees, owners, and family members, and includes … Read more

Does a Reddit live chat give Obama more tech cred?

Ever the tech-conscious politician, President Barack Obama today held a live Q&A session on, arguably, the geekist message board around -- Reddit.

The session may up the president's tech cred, which has already been bolstered in the past by his social media prowess and use of technology in campaigns.

Many have said that his use of social media in the 2008 election helped him get elected and just last week, Obama's campaign became the first to accept contributions via text messages.

Reddit General Manager Erik Martin said he didn't know what this would do for … Read more

Facebook, CNN election insights show lots of Romney chatter

Facebook and CNN launched their election "real-time" insights feature today to show how much presidential candidates are talked about on the world's largest social network.

The insights show that most of the country's Facebook users are currently talking about presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, which makes sense since the Republican National Convention kicks off today.

CNN has the information are broken down by state, age ranges and gender.

This is a continuation of a partnership between Facebook and CNN announced earlier this year. The two companies paired up to introduce a "I'm Voting" app … Read more

YouTube debuts 'Elections Hub,' a one-stop campaign channel

YouTube launched "Elections Hub" today -- its one-stop shop for this year's election coverage.

The video service announced that with this specialized channel, all live speeches from the upcoming Democratic and Republican National Conventions will be streamed. Also, people can watch Google+ Hangouts and live streams of the official presidential and vice presidential debates. The channel debuted today and will available through Election Day.

"You won't need to go anywhere else for the must-watch moments of this election cycle," YouTube news manager Olivia Ma wrote in a blog post today, "they're all … Read more

Amazon looks at book purchases to size up presidential race

Amazon is culling sales data to determine what the election season conversation might be about in each of the 50 U.S. states.

The e-retail giant yesterday launched the Amazon Election Heat Map 2012. The map lists all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, and assigns either a red or blue color to each, depending on the number of conservative- or liberal-minded books purchased by citizens. If a state has purchased more liberal books, it'll be shaded blue. States with more conservative book purchases will be shaded red.

Judging by the current map, the U.S. … Read more

Is technology making political campaigns (even) dumber?

Every time there's supposedly big news on the campaign trail, I fear acid reflux.

What accusations will some fine politician toss at another fine politician in order to sway my stomach -- and thereby my vote?

What ridiculous, illegitimate assertion will be barked by one politician that will spur an opponent to retweet, regurgitate, or resign?

I had always thought politics a grubby business, one in which the energy behind the lie is even more important than the lie itself.

And yet, some esteemed figures believe that the level of political discourse has been brought even lower by technology.… Read more

Obama still beats Romney in digital messaging -- study

While Mitt Romney is getting better at harnessing the power of the Internet for campaigning, the current POTUS still dominates the online world.

President Barack Obama's campaign has used more direct digital messaging than Romney's campaign, according to a Pew Research Center report released today.

The report notes Romney's attempts to catch up to Obama's tech savvy, with Romney's most recent stunt involving the announcement of his VP pick via an app. The report also mentions Obama's 2008 sucess with social media campaigning.

The research -- part of the center's studies over the … Read more