After the Election…What I think

November 8, 2012

The 2012 election is over. President Obama won re-election. Democrats kept a majority in the Senate and picked up some seats in the House. (In Colorado, Democrats now hold the governorship, the state Senate, and the state House!) Obama crushed the electoral map, even without Florida being final. And he took the popular vote. In fact, Democratic candidates have won the popular vote in 5 of the past 6 elections.

Now it’s time to get to work.

But, first, I can’t hold back sharing some of my opinions about the election, politics, the parties, and our government.

The direction of our society: To me, this election represents a clear signal of people’s desires for how they want to live and build a society.

The election involved taxes, debt, war, foreign policy, and other bureaucratic matters. But this election was really about emotions, community, and freedom.

The Republican Party, as it exists today, is not the party of Roosevelt or Lincoln or even Reagan. Today’s Republican Party is the party of fear—fear of terrorism, fear of losing money, fear of choice, fear of things that are different. People living in fear are not free.

Today’s Republican Party is the party of exclusion—don’t look the same, don’t talk the same, don’t think the same, don’t pray the same—the Republicans don’t want you.

It’s beyond intolerance and selfishness. Little emotions motivate like fear motivates.

Democrats, still imperfect, offer choice, support, community, and liberty—liberty in the form our country was founded on.

Obama’s campaign was impressive. He and his team got people to knock on doors, make phone calls, and focus on the right neighborhoods to get the votes they needed. Democrats are just doing these things much better than Republicans.

And, the Obama team sent a lot of emails. I’d be willing to bet I got close to 1,000 emails. All that Internet campaigning has been a trademark of Obama, but it really owes its roots to Howard Dean and his 2003 campaign.

Dean’s over-celebration may have ended his own presidential hopes, but he set the stage for a new strategy of campaigning using the Web. Obama’s team picked up the strategy, crafted it, and used it to support two winning campaigns. Every since FDR, that’s the best a presidential campaign can do.

By the way, Obama won Massachusetts.

Money in politics: This election season included a lot of money. According to the Sunlight Foundation, “No matter what part of it you look at, campaign spending for this election has been higher than ever before. It has been estimated that the first post-Citizens United election has brought more than $6 billion in spending.”

It’s not the amount of money that’s a problem. The problem is who is spending it and how it’s being spent.

The overshadowed story: Elizabeth Warren knocked off Scott Brown to pick up a Senate seat from Massachusetts. She is a true consumer and citizen supporter. Here are some of her comments that ring true to me. It represents the kind of honesty, humility, and realism I support.

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there – good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea – God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.


The economy: By almost every measure, the economy is improving. Here are a couple examples:

The stock market is up. The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 have all had significant gains since Obama took office.
Here’s the Dow’s performance:

Unemployment is dropping: It’s been up and down, but it’s currently about the same as when Obama took office.

The elites: There are just as many rich Democrats as rich Republicans. People living in the wealthiest areas of the country voted for Obama.
Here are the 100 wealthiest counties in the US:

And here’s the Electoral map:

People living in the most affluent counties in the country, other than in Texas and a few in Virginia, voted for Obama.

Moving on: We get four more years of a President who believes in working together, not leaving any one behind, and moving every one forward. We also get at least two more years of a divided Congress. We all want action from our elected officials, but we, as a country, are not frustrated enough to make it happen. Apathy and disillusionment are still holding us back. The 2012 voter turnout isn’t final yet, but it’s not looking good, even worse than 2008.

Luckily we live in the country with the most changeable system of government in the world with the most opportunities for citizens to take the reins. We just need to step up and do it.

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Posted by Scott Primeau

Cook County Develops Open Government

April 25, 2011

Open government efforts have been rapidly developing in cities, counties, state government agencies, and federal government agencies.  I hesitate to call the developing efforts prolific, but more and more efforts are popping up.  A recent article on Govloop, “How Many Open Government Projects Are There?”, helped illustrate the development of the open government movement across the country.

In January, I wrote about the development of the Model Local Open Government Directive.  The model was a product of CityCamp Colorado and a collaborative effort of CityCamp, Colorado Smart Communities, Code for America, the Sunlight Foundation, OpenPlans.  The model provided cities, counties, and other governments with a framework they could adapt to implement open government principles—transparency, participation, and collaboration.  Since that announcement, the open government movement has continued to grow.

The latest update comes in the form of the Open Cook County Plan from Cook County, Illinois.  The Open Cook County Plan, which is based at least in part on the Model Local Open Government Directive, “is aimed at making county government data and information publicly available so residents can more effectively understand, interact with and improve government.”   

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said, “I know that the historic lack of transparency and accountability has eroded the legitimacy of Cook County government in many residents’ eyes. Quite simply, a government that is transparent and accountable to its residents is a more effective government.”  Cook County Commissioner John Fritchey went on to say, “This initiative will allow for unprecedented interaction, allowing residents access and use of county data to better understand how county government is operating and to make recommendations on how to improve and use government and services.”

The Cook County government has clearly recognized the benefits to its citizens and itself that following open government principles will provide.  Citizen satisfaction and government efficiency are just a couple of the benefits of open government.  The opportunities for cost savings and public and private sector innovation are also abundant.

I applaud Cook County’s effort to become a leader in the open government movement, along with the federal government, San Francisco, Manor, TX, Portland, Vancouver, and many other cities, counties, and other governments.  I am also very proud to see the work of several professionals and fellow volunteers being recognized and adapted.    

With additional promotion coming at the Sunlight Foundation’s upcoming Transparency Camp and the Gov 2.0a Conference, I expect knowledge and support of the main open government principles—transparency, participation, and collaboration—and the Open Government Initiative to grow.

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Posted by Scott Primeau

Realizing Democracy through Technology

September 16, 2009

Government is often thought of as having closed doors, being insensitive, inflexible, unbending, secretive, and controlling.  In short, the public doesn’t think highly of government.  And, it’s not just because the public has high expectations.  The public should have high expectations of the government of the greatest nation in the world. 

Yet, government is simply made up of people.  Our government administrators and our elected officials are our friends, neighbors, and colleagues.  Sometimes, something transforms these people with good intentions within the halls of bureaucracy.  Maybe it’s the tradition of facing negative public opinion.  Maybe it’s the stress of trying to please everyone.  Maybe government really is made up of self-serving, power-hungry, deaf-to-the-public, bureaucrats.  I don’t think that’s the case. 

Not every person can attend public hearings, speeches, debates, and other government events.  Many government events are held between 8 AM and 5 PM, Monday through Friday, which immediately excludes many people with regular, full-time jobs.

Luckily, technology and some dedicated, honest, citizen-oriented administrators are charging towards opportunities for informing and collaborating with the public.

Online technology, notably social media, enhances and expands the opportunities people have to share their opinions and participate in government decision-making.

Colorado Senate President Brandon Shaffer, for example, is using an online survey to supplement his personal visits around Colorado to invite suggestions from people about how to improve life in the state.  He’s also reaching out to people via Twitter and Facebook.  His follower and fan counts aren’t extensive, but these online efforts have a lot of potential to complement in-person events.

The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office involved the public in an informal comment period regarding changes to administrative rules.  Subject-matter experts who participated in past collaborative efforts were directly invited, and the public-at-large was welcomed to participate in commenting on proposed rules as well as making direct changes to the proposed rules using a Google Group site.  Government agencies are required to conduct open public comment periods prior to holding hearings to pass administrative rules, but this informal effort brought the public into direct communication with employees in the Secretary of State’s Office and gave people the opportunity to write the rules that will affect their transactions with the office.

To support citizens’ sharing their opinions and experiences with health care, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter launched a website to help citizens send letters to the editors of newspapers.  The site allows people to enter a zip code and retrieve the contact information for nearby newspapers.  People can then write their message and send it directly to the editors.  There are even pre-written points that people can add to their own messages or use to help get their thoughts flowing.

The Colorado legislature has been broadcasting its sessions since January 2008 on the Colorado Channel and online streaming video.  Former Colorado Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff helped pioneer this effort to share the actions of state lawmakers with people who can’t come down to the Capitol to watch.

Current Speaker of the House Terrance Carroll is successfully using Facebook to both share political updates and to foster personal relationships. 

These are just a few examples of Colorado public officials using social media to further connect with people.  Several federal government agencies are also conducting social media efforts to share data and more easily obtain citizen feedback.  The TSA blog is one of the most successful examples.

While there are many admirable citizen engagement efforts being undertaken, there are still some efforts that are coming up short.  For example, Gov. Ritter issued a press release seeking comments to rules regarding roadless lands, a controversial issue here in the West.  However, the press release did not provide any information about how to submit comments.  That makes for a seemingly empty request for citizen input.  To be fair, however, Gov. Ritter is making several other efforts to promote communication with citizens and transparency in state government, such as with the Transparency Online Project.

Government, however, encounters several obstacles to successfully undertaking collaborative efforts.  Resources for developing and monitoring communication tools are often limited and specifications in terms of service and other regulations sometimes prevent the use of free tools. 

“But,” as former EPA CIO Molly O’Neill said, “technology is the easy part – creating truly collaborative services is much harder and brings big changes. True government collaboration means being open and transparent with data, assumptions, debates, and decisions.”

On top of the physical constraints, people’s perspective of government sometimes prevents them from participating.  Through years of tightly-held decision-making, some citizens have become disillusioned and have come to anticipate a lack of recognition from government- along the lines of “your comments will be disregarded in the order they were received.”  People may be reluctant to participate because they think it’s a waste of their time.  Then, there’s the old-guard that’s standing behind the closed doors. 

Through consistent, sincere efforts government is overcoming these obstacles.  The public needs to see that their comments and suggestions are being seriously considered.  The doors of the old-guard can be broken down with the dedication of thoughtful employees.

Public officials and administrators and the public are responsible for using these opportunities to establish better policies and programs and to push our government to truly support life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Government needs to provide the tools that are available and share information.  People need to share their voices and expertise.  And, government needs to listen.

Thomas Jefferson said, “An informed democracy will act responsibly.”  About 200 years later we may be realizing that vision.

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Posted by Scott Primeau