Sarah Granger directed the launch of what Wired News and political analysts called the “first true weblog to be put up by a politician,” the Gary Hart News Blog, while directing Internet strategy for Senator Hart's 2004 U.S. presidential exploratory organization. A writer, speaker and campaign adviser with a background in IT and web project management, Sarah has been referenced as an expert in information technology and society by numerous major media organizations. She is the founder and Managing Director for FutureCampaigns and a member of the U.S. Public Policy Committee for the Association for Computing Machinery (USACM). Sarah is a contributing editor for techPresident, MOMocrats, BlogHer, and The Political Voices of Women. A more detailed bio can be found at futurecampaigns.com.

Blog Entries by Sarah Granger

The Internet President

Posted November 5, 2008 | 10:40 PM (EST)


Since Howard Dean's unprecedented fundraising success online in 2003, a lot of speculation has gone into how the technology of the Internet might transform politics and when we might have our first "Internet President." Over the course of the 2008 election, we witnessed a phenomenon that could never have occurred...

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Online Assistance Arrives to Combat Voting Hurdles, Glitches and Dirty Tricks

2 Comments | Posted October 30, 2008 | 03:42 PM (EST)


The bottom line: vote early, request a paper ballot, and report any problems immediately. HAVA (the Help America Vote Act) -- well-intentioned legislation meant to prevent the voter problems from 2000 of repeating -- gave too much power to technology, has been poorly applied and the results are mixed....

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Latest from Obama Tech Arsenal: iPhone App & VoteforChange.com

3 Comments | Posted October 3, 2008 | 05:27 PM (EST)


I couldn't have been more geeked to receive a tweet via text to my iPhone yesterday morning from 'BarackObama' announcing the launch of the campaign's official iPhone application, 'Obama '08'. Thanks to the Twitter-SMS combo, five minutes later, I had downloaded the app and begun using it. I was...

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Online Debate Commentary Tools Make Heckling Candidates That Much Easier

1 Comments | Posted September 26, 2008 | 05:02 PM (EST)


Live blogging debates has become commonplace, finely tuned in the stream of primary debates. This week, bloggers are taking it up a notch with social networking and video tools. Virtual debate-watch parties just got easier. Twitter and Current TV are working together to tweet the debates on TV....

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Hackers Post Palin's Private E-Mail Account

Posted September 17, 2008 | 09:59 PM (EST)


The hacker group 'Anonymous' claims it broke into Sarah Palin's private Yahoo! email account and published it on the Web to WikiLeaks early Wednesday. The Wikileaks postings include screen shots that show lists of e-mail subject lines, specific messages, and photographs of Palin's family as evidence of the validity...

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McCain Computer Ignorance Raises New Questions: Can His Injured Hands Type?

Posted September 12, 2008 | 09:18 PM (EST)


In response to an Obama campaign ad that reminded viewers of John McCain's computer illiteracy, bloggers circulated reports that war injuries may prevent the Republican presidential nominee from using a computer keyboard.

On Friday, the Obama campaign's new ad called "Still" criticized McCain for being "out of touch" and...

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Palin's Wikipedia Entry Altered Before Announcement

Posted August 30, 2008 | 07:31 PM (EST)


Internet watch dogs have sniffed out an online snafu in terms of Governor Sarah Palin's biographical credibility. According to a story that broke on NPR Friday, 30 "favorable changes" were made to Palin's Wikipedia biography. The changes, discovered by a Wikipedia editor, and laid out side-by-side on a...

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Dude, Where's My Text Message?

Posted August 23, 2008 | 05:39 AM (EST)


First to know? Not quite. The best new media campaign in history botched their attempt to keep a lid on the VP pick in order to announce it via text messaging. It turned out to be just too difficult to keep quiet. However, although it was - technically speaking...

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Obama: "VP 2 B..."

Posted August 11, 2008 | 04:22 AM (EST)


One day soon, we may wake up, bleary-eyed, before the morning coffee, to a message on our mobile device of choice: "VP 2 B Bayh" or some other similarly terse but meaty digital-era code. It may not pack the power of a rousing speech, but leave it to the Obama...

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Smear 2.0: Attack-Ad Culture Goes Online

Posted August 7, 2008 | 08:02 PM (EST)


"Are You Pumped?" asks Exxon-McCain, a website dedicated to underlining John McCain's relationship with Big Oil, the latest in a series of sites that take aim at the presidential candidates. The DNC released Exxon-McCain Wednesday, posting video and text on the $2 Million in contributions "Exxon & friends" have...

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Voting Machine Debacles Continue As Election Nears

Posted July 30, 2008 | 03:12 AM (EST)


Although hanging chads may be a thing of the past, concerns with voting machines and election processes more generally abound. Analysts say there remain significant problems, like a lack of paper records and audit trails, voting machine "sleepovers," prohibitively long voter wait times, and piecemeal government policies.

In...

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Women Bloggers Want The Real Thing

Posted July 23, 2008 | 11:14 PM (EST)


One thousand women bloggers met in San Francisco this week for the annual BlogHer conference, while Netroots Nation was rocking Austin. The two things attendees most wanted to know were how to be successful in the political blogosphere and whether their candidates are up to the challenge.

Last year,...

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DNCC Blogger Details Still a Puzzle

Posted July 14, 2008 | 10:15 PM (EST)


It's like an LSAT question: if bloggers W, X, Y and Z from publications A, B, C, D, and E apply for passes 1, 2, and 3, the bloggers to receive the three passes must have Technorati stats equal to the circumference of the sun divided by pi times .003...

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Moving Toward Transparent Government

Posted July 1, 2008 | 10:21 PM (EST)


Picture for a moment what the official White House website, would look like with a President Obama at the reins: there would be the usual news, issues, photos, but also perhaps an interactive blog, a policy wiki, video feeds from meetings, a tracking tool to see whether we're on...

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Campaign Internet Strategists Clash At Web Conference

Posted June 25, 2008 | 01:19 AM (EST)


Monday when Mark Soohoo, the Republican Internet strategist for John McCain defended his candidate's legitimacy as someone with a deep understanding of how technology can revolutionize government during the PDF '08 conference, Tracy Russo, formerly of the Edwards campaign, let loose her thoughts, drawing on a post she wrote...

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Personal Democracy Forum: Twitter Debate On Now!

Posted June 20, 2008 | 06:50 PM (EST)


As of Friday evening, representatives from the Obama and McCain campaigns will be embarking on a four-day debate online. Moderated by founding Wonkette Ana Marie Cox, now Time magazine's Swampland blogger, Mike Nelson (for Obama) and Liz Mair (for McCain) will be using Twitter to respond to questions...

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