Technology’s Top Ten Election Lows—and yeah, they’re pretty low.

Sarah Palin’s health is “excellent.” Her running mate’s, less so.

Stop the presses! Study shows that political candidates may actually tend to keep their promises.

The “Bradley Effect” may have been neither from Bradley nor an effect. Discuss.

The latest in media bias research asks: Is it possible to quantify a partisan slant?

As it turns out, being alive is not always a prerequisite for having your vote counted—and perhaps rightfully so.

And this from Russia Today: “Supporters would sell soul to see Obama.” Hey, the selling-something-intangible strategy worked so well with credit default swaps.

Tomorrow, we vote. Estimates place the turnout at around 130 million or more, possibly the largest in American history. Of course, not everyone registered will necessarily be able to cast their ballot—and even uglier, not every ballot cast will necessarily be counted. Before you head to the polls tomorrow, here’s a list of all the facts you’ll need to ensure your vote doesn’t end up trapped forever in the bowels of the technology/Democratic leviathan.

Avoid being one of the 3 percent who cast ballots in error (and that’s without the machines messing up) by following these guidelines, compiled by researchers at the University of Maryland. (Hint: Beware the optical scanner.)

Last chance to check your registration! So far it’s been one of the biggest problems voters have faced at the polls.

Having trouble with your DRE or optical scan ballot? Look for a camera to document your woes: PBS and YouTube are joining forces to collect and stream user-generated video from polling places nationwide.

If there’s no video evidence, you can still exercise your right to protest crummy voting technology via the Internets.

Speaking of which, technology has enjoyed unprecedented domination over this election—which might continue into the next administration.

And, for those still undecided (or rather, those who think they are) here’s a handy personality checklist for liberals v. conservatives that might help you make up your mind. Then again, if you still haven’t come to a conclusion, you may need more than a checklist.

Image: Flickr / Muffett

Related:
RB: Voting in America: Let the Pre-Game Mess Begin!
RB: Voting in America, Redux: You Can’t Vote Here, But You Can Vote in Space
RB: Be Very Afraid: Online Voting Systems Fail Even for Political Bloggers
RB: Politicians v. Technology: Obama, McCain Battle the Internet
RB: Obama Would Win Easily…If the Election Were a Web Poll

Just how likely is it that McCain will die of cancer in the next few years? Do a little Web surfing, and you’ll find around a gazillion (and that’s a low estimate) different answers, very few of which rely on clear, unbiased fact. To cut through the jargon and get the real picture, check out my feature story on the truth about the Arizona Senator’s melanoma risk. (Spoiler: It’s low.)

It’s worth noting that not every member of the medical establishment was willing to discuss the Republican nominee’s health. In particular, the communications director of a prominent cancer foundation informed us that if the word “McCain” would be mentioned anywhere in the piece, not a single physician or expert would agree to comment. When pressed, she said that if she set up any interviews for a piece on McCain, even just to talk about melanoma on background without answering specific questions about the Senator’s condition, she would “definitely be terminated.”

So much for the freedom of medicine from political influence (not that we ever really thought it existed).

Related:
RB: The Truth About McCain’s Melanoma: He Faces a Very Low Risk

In the final stretch before Nov. 4th, both the Obama and McCain camps have been hurling their efforts—not to mention cash—at key battleground states like Ohio, Colorado, and Florida. Most of the money has gone towards a near-nonstop rotation of TV and other ads, many of which consist of shoveling as much BS on your opponent’s head as possible in 30 seconds.

The ad game is all part of the conventional election wisdom, which goes something like, “Drown out the other guy’s messages with your own, and you’ll snag the voters.” But as it turns out, the barrage of competing ads may actually be having the opposite effect: A new study found that the more bombarded people are with different political messages, the more confused and ambivalent they become. In other words, all those clogged airwaves in Michigan and Ohio may be upping the chances that voters stay home on election day.

The study’s data consisted of surveys from the American National Election Study in 2000—which, as you’ll likely recall, was a particularly messy/disastrous/laughable example of politics in action. That year, the University of Michigan ran the survey, which included interviews with over 1,800 voters.

Study authors (and swing state voters) Luke Keele of Ohio State University and Jennifer Wolak of the University of Colorado, Boulder compared the survey results of voters in battleground versus sure-thing states, measuring levels of ambivalence based on the number of positive and/or negative items that the respondents listed about both Bush and Gore. The idea was that if a voter thought the two candidates were equally good/bad, it was a sign of that voter’s ambivalence. Keele and Wolak then cross-checked their results against the amount of TV each voter watched.

And the results?

[T]he total volume of candidate ads in a state had no effect on ambivalence levels among residents. However, ambivalence levels were higher in states where there was a high number of Democratic ads and a high number of Republican ads running at the same time.

“Competition in presidential ad spending promotes ambivalence,” Keele said. “People are continually hit with conflicting messages.”

Thank God we have YouTube to splice it all together and save us some time.

Related:

RB: Politicians v. Technology: Obama, McCain Battle the Internet
RB: How Much Does Your Brain Control How You Vote?

• Expert tells Texas voting officials: You’re Screwed.

• And if you do find yourself given the disenfranchisement middle finger on Nov. 4, be sure to report it on Wired’s interactive voting booth map!

• The one place where the economy is still strong and credit flows like rivers: Second Life.

• Sure, we’ve got Joe the Plumber slapped on every headline these days, but how about “Joe the Solar Guy“?

• Your complete guide to claiming green tax credits in 2008—perhaps the only money you’ll squeeze from the government this year.

• Pfizer settles all those pesky class actions over Celebrex and Bextra, to the tune of $894 million.

• Like tuna tartare? Better get it while it lasts (hint: won’t be long now).

Even with all the melee over hockey moms and plumbers and fake registration cards, technology has been a dominating story in this campaign. The candidates have used it, and benefited from it, in varying degrees (campaign ads in video games may take the cake), and the Web has taken its place as a major game changer in American politics. But there was always the lingering downside: Just as the Internet can build you up, so can it rip you down.

Now, CNN has a report on the measures the candidates are taking to mop up the rumors, attacks, and lies that bubble like oil through the airwaves—and yes, there’s a lot of them.

In fact, this campaign has seen the highest number of Internet smears in history—hardly surprising given the continually-increasing reach and scope of the medium. So how do these intrepid (and extremely overworked) political staffers manage to scour the reaches of the Internet and counter all the garbage thrown at their candidates?

A source inside Obama’s campaign spoke to DISCOVER, and explained the Democratic team’s strategy as follows:

We have a really good research and rapid response team, and they work really closely with the new media team on this kind of [stuff]. They spend a lot of daily time scouring the Internet looking for fraud, lies, copyright infringement, etc. The big public piece of this is fightthesmears.com—a major component of which is a big grassroots group (The Obama Actionwire) who are a big team of volunteers who have signed up to help spread the truth about [the rumors] when they hit.

Granted, there’s only so much mere mortals can do: A Google search for “Obama” and “terrorist” at one point reportedly yielded over 8 million results (it now brings up fewer than 1 million). Plus there’s the ugly fact that once misinformation is out there, it may be futile to try and clean it up.

Related:

RB: Obama Would Win Easily…If the Election Were a Web Poll
RB: As Obama Makes History, the Internet Records It
RB: Political Misinformation (Or Simple Lack of Thought) Is a Product of Our Brains

Image: Flickr/oporder

Voter fraud can happen more easily than we think (along with just about every other form of election fraud). In the past few weeks, the McCain camp has been hammering away at the voter fraud issue, specifically targeting the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a nationwide advocacy group that has made recent headlines for its vigorous campaign to register new voters—the vast majority of which happen to be poor or working class, and Democrats.

For the $16 million ACORN has poured into the 2008 campaign, the agency has achieved some impressive results: The tallies indicate that it added 1.3 million new voters to the rolls. Of course, whether those 1.3 million registrations actually correspond to 1.3 million human beings is under investigation. In Las Vegas, investigators raided an ACORN office and seized documents based on claims of registration fraud, and authorities in other states are also taking a closer look at the agency’s practices. Allegations are flying around that ACORN employees filled out hundreds, or possibly even thousands of registration cards with fake names, or the names of prison inmates. One man is facing questioning for allegedly registering to vote 10 to 15 times through ACORN (though assuming all the registrations were for himself, and he only votes once, his actions are hardly a crime).

Cue the self-righteous blustering about the perilous state of democracy, which have been countered with charges that the investigations are really just a means of disenfranchising minority voters.

Meanwhile, ACORN is rushing to restore its reputation with a PR blitz including a press release that states the following:

According to [voting rights] experts, spreading fears of fraudulent voting—which happens less often in the U.S. than death by lightning—is done to discredit voter registration efforts and justify restrictive laws that place additional barriers to full participation for all Americans.

For the record, around 90 people per year are killed by lightning in the U.S. Investigators are looking into at least 2,100 possible bogus voter applications in Indiana alone—not to mention thousands more in Ohio, Michigan, and Nevada. So there goes that theory.

But how often does voter fraud [as opposed to the alleged registration fraud] really occur? And if ACORN did in fact fudge registrations, what are their chances of actually getting away with casting fraudulent votes?

Unfortunately, according to Dan Wallach, an e-voting expert and associate professor of computer science at Rice University, the answers to both depend on a number of factors, none of which we know for sure.

“The problem is we don’t have good data on voter fraud,” Wallach told DISCOVER. “If I add fake people to real voting rolls, it’s very difficult to know how much damage I could do. If those fake people were voting by mail, it would be straightforward to inject fake ballots into the real votes. This is much harder to do with polling, since someone has to show up and convince poll employees that they’re a real voter.”

Complicating matters more is that states have different rules regarding what and how much ID voters must show at the polls. “Some states don’t require you to show any ID,” said Wallach, “so if you have five different voter registration cards, you could conceivably vote five different times.”

What we do know is that whether voter fraud become an issue all depends on the margin of victory in November. Given the number of questionable registrations we’re talking about in each state (not all of which are for Democrats), it’s highly unlikely that, even if every one of the alleged fake “voters” managed to cast a ballot, it would affect the outcome.

Then again, there’s always Florida.

Related:
DISCOVER: Protecting Your Vote with Invisible Ink
RB: Voting in America: Let the Pre-Game Mess Begin!

The 2008 election will be one for the history books. But it may also be one for the psych texts, with its revealing look inside how politics brings out the basest, most reptilian impulses in the depths of the human mind.

We know that affiliation with a political party or group goes deeper than just your thoughts on abortion or free markets—how you cast a ballot is even rooted in neuroscience. And more research is being done concerning the impact of past leaders’ race and gender on our psyche from childhood on. Plus the gallons of mud slung, not to mention the race-baiting, finger pointing, and infighting, are enough to provide behavioral psychologists with research fodder for decades.

Meanwhile, reporters from all over the campaign trail are bewailing the seeming total lack of rational thought that goes into many voters’ ballot-casting decisions.

Well, as the New Scientist reports, we may be asking a little too much of humanity when we expect every voter (or even a plurality) to form an opinion of the candidates based on carefully-reasoned and factually-grounded analysis of their positions and backgrounds. In other words: Our brains just aren’t built that way.

The human mind arranges things into categories, with limited storage space for information on each one. What we don’t know, we tend to fudge through associations that we do know. For instance, if you don’t know which way McCain voted in the 2003 Senate vote on Iraq, you do know that he’s a Republican, and most Republicans have supported the war. So whether or not he voted for or against the pro-war bill becomes irrelevant—your brain has already filled in the gap.

Even then learning the correct information isn’t enough to dislodge the initial connection from your mind, according to research: Once you’ve decided that McCain is a “maverick” who goes against the grain, all the evidence in the world that he consistently votes with his party won’t necessarily change your mind.

It’s safe to say that, whether or not they’ve read the latest neuroscientific research, political strategists have known about this capacity (or lack thereof) of the mind for years—and this time around, they’ve been exploiting the hell out of it.

Given the historical magnitude and importance of the 2008 election, it’s no surprise that the event has been prompting plenty of artistic interpretations. Obama has inspired prints and been the subject of numerous collaborations, while New Hampshire’s Currier Museum of Art is cashing in on the trend by selling t-shirts, magnets and pins with Warhol-inspired images of the two candidates.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles-based artist Kim Abeles had a slightly more incisive idea to illustrate each candidate’s commitment to emissions reduction: Make portraits with pollution. To create her prints, Abeles placed stencil images of each candidate on top of sheets of opaque glass, then left them on the roof of her studio in downtown L.A. Obama, who has proposed an 80 percent emissions reduction, was left out for nine days, while McCain, who promises a 60 percent reduction, was out in the air for 18 days (all lengths of time were based on Abeles’s estimation of the difference in emissions levels that the two would tolerate).

When she took the prints down and removed the stencils, the images revealed themselves in all their smog-catching glory. The depth and colors offer a pictorial comparison of the pollution each candidate would leave in the atmosphere.

The L.A. Times has a source who claims to have spoken directly to Palin about dinosaurs in 1997, when she was mayor of Wasilla. Stephen Braun reports that the notoriously soundbite-ready VP nominee told Philip Munger, a music teacher at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, that “dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time” 6,000 years ago—an statement that’s so horribly incorrect on so many levels, yet still all too common in creationist lore. Munger said Palin insisted that “she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks.” Were these pictures on display here by any chance?

Granted, Munger is no fan of the photogenic governor: He writes the actively anti-Palin blog ProgressiveAlaska, and has appeared on ultra-liberal Air America radio to speak out against her. Still, unless yet another blogger digs up evidence that he’s lying, there’s no proof that their exchange is a myth. And, of course, all this could be cleared up by a simple Q&A with Palin herself—if such a thing was possible.

Image: Flickr/williac

• The debates are on! Slate analyzes what each candidate must do to win, while a cognitive linguist says the key to victory is appealing to “values, not facts.” Clearly the GOP got that memo.

• Eye-gate explained: A doctor-blogger discusses the controversy over McCain’s apparent facial ailment.

• If you’re going to be president in one of the world’s most volatile times, it’s good to have the Nobel winners on your side.

• January may not be soon enough: The director of NIH resigns, leaving the organization in purgatory until the next administration shows up.

• So signs of autism appear around the time of vaccinations, therefore vaccines must cause autism! Not so much. Here’s a far likelier (and actually logical) explanation.

• This is your brain on cell phones: More warnings from scientists to Congress on your cell’s potential danger.

• Facebook and the science of narcissism.

While there’s little doubt the economy will be the defining issue in this election, the candidates’ positions on environmental issues can’t be downplayed (after all, what good are $700 billion bailouts if our coastlines are underwater). With the goal of keeping the environment front and center during this election season, best-selling author and DISCOVER contributor Thomas Kostigen put five questions to the two candidates, on topics including climate change, the dwindling water supply, hazardous waste, alt-energy investments, and the private sector’s role in contributing to the clean-up.

As you may recall, both Obama and McCain recently answered 14 questions on science policy from ScienceDebate 2008. While the Obama camp’s answers concerning climate change and alt-energy investments are largely consistent with what ScienceDebate received, this time he includes more detail, including his plans for allocation of the revenue generated by cap-and-trade auctions as well as his proposal to create a $10 billion venture capital fund to bolster clean technology development.

Similarly, McCain’s responses on energy and global warming echo what he told ScienceDebate, including his pledge to instate permanent alt-energy tax breaks (a promise that Obama makes as well) and a vow to “lead by example” in the “greening of the federal government.”

Questions to Barack Obama

TK: Ensuring an adequate water supply is a huge issue, arguably a bigger challenge than energy. Recent estimates say we are going to have to increase our supply of freshwater by 20 percent in the next 20 years to meet world demand. Two-thirds of the world’s population will experience water shortages by 2025. Meanwhile, the Clean Water Act hasn’t been updated since 1972. What plans do you have for addressing the freshwater issue?

BO: Water quality and availability are critical issues for America and the world. An Obama administration will put water issues—both quantity and quality—at the top of our environmental agenda.

My family and I have lived near one of the world’s most precious freshwater treasures, Lake Michigan, for nearly 20 years. I understand how clean water can make a difference in people’s lives and a community’s economic health. I have seen beaches close because of pollution. As a result, I worked to understand and address the root causes of beach closings, including polluted runoff and sewage overflows that limit the time families can spend along some of our most treasured coasts.

It’s time to revitalize the Clean Water Act. I am troubled by recent court rulings that have confused rather than clarified federal jurisdiction over “waters of the United States,” including environmentally sensitive wetlands critical to maintaining supplies of clean freshwater. I will support efforts to ensure that federal protection of the nation’s waters is strengthened, not weakened. As president, I will also work to restore funding to the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (SRF) and other programs aimed at improving the quality of our nation’s lakes, rivers, and drinking water.

TK: While the number of landfills in the United States has shrunk over the past 20 years from 8,000 to 1,700, we now create twice as much waste. Do you have any plans to create incentives for manufacturers to develop environmentally friendly products? And how should we deal with the growth of hazardous consumer waste, including electronics and compact fluorescent light bulbs?

BO: Waste—household and hazardous—represents an ongoing challenge to the United States. I believe we need incentives to minimize waste production and promote much more recycling. We can do this by more aggressively using the federal laws that regulate waste disposal and product manufacture so that we use fewer toxic chemicals, generate less manufacturing waste, and reduce packaging materials. We can also challenge manufacturers of computers, printers, and other electronic equipment to more effectively take back these products when they are discarded so that their components can be reused rather than shipped to landfills.

TK: What are your plans for alternative-energy investments and research, as well as for the tactical implementation of different power sources?

BO: I have committed to a broad array of incentives that would engage the private sector in developing alternative energy. Moving toward a clean-energy future will require galvanizing the American people and harnessing our spirit of innovation. I will invest $150 billion over 10 years to advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure, accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, promote development of commercial-scale renewable energy, invest in low-emissions coal plants, and begin the transition to a new digital electricity grid. A principal focus of this fund will be ensuring that technologies that are developed in the United States are rapidly commercialized here and deployed around the globe. I will double science and research funding for clean-energy projects, including those that make use of our biomass, solar, and wind resources. I will establish a federal investment program to help manufacturing centers modernize and help Americans learn the new skills they need to produce green products. I will create a Clean Technologies Venture Capital Fund to fill a critical gap in U.S. technology development, and I will invest $10 billion per year into this fund for five years. The fund will partner with existing investment funds and our National Laboratories to ensure that promising technologies move beyond the lab and are commercialized in the United States.

TK: During World War II Franklin Delano Roosevelt called upon the automakers in Detroit to do their part for the war and repurpose their facilities to make military equipment. The automakers complied, but it took tough talk and convincing. Do the private sector and the public today need a similar call to arms? If so, what is it?

BO: America does need a new spirit of commitment to a clean-energy future and a cleaner environment. Progress in these key areas depends on strong political leadership, which has been entirely lacking in Washington for too long. In addition, it is critical that we create incentives to guide the private sector toward the innovation required to address our pressing energy and environmental challenges. A good example is the automobile industry, where I would push our manufacturers to make more-efficient vehicles using advanced technologies like plug-in hybrids and would provide tax incentives for consumers to purchase these vehicles and financial assistance to help the industry retool our existing plants to build them.

TK: What is the most imminent danger brought on by climate change, and what are you going to do about it?

BO: The dangers posed by climate change are varied and complex. As a result of climate change, sea levels are rising, storms are becoming more intense, regions are experiencing extended drought, ocean food chains are at risk, and habitat and agricultural patterns around the globe are changing. These serious impacts are under way today. However, the greatest risk to our planet is the prospect of reaching a so-called tipping point in the climate system—like the release of methane in permafrost regions or a shift in the Gulf Stream—that would result in runaway climate change impacts we cannot control or respond to.

I support implementation of an economy-wide cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions by the amount science says is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change: 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. My proposed cap-and-trade system will require 100 percent auction of credits. Some of the revenue generated by the auction will be used to support the development of clean energy, to invest in energy-efficiency improvements, and to address transition costs, including helping American workers affected by this economic transition. I will also develop domestic incentives that reward forest owners, farmers, and ranchers when they plant trees, restore grasslands, or undertake farming practices that capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Questions to John McCain

TK: Ensuring an adequate water supply is a huge issue, arguably a bigger challenge than energy. Recent estimates say we are going to have to increase our supply of freshwater by 20 percent in the next 20 years to meet world demand. Two-thirds of the world’s population will experience water shortages by 2025. Meanwhile, the Clean Water Act hasn’t been updated since 1972. What plans do you have for addressing the freshwater issue?

JM: As a westerner, I understand the vital role that water plays in the development of western economies and in maintaining a high quality of life. Water is truly our lifeblood. I believe that we must develop, manage, and use our limited water supplies wisely and with a conservation ethic to ensure that we have sufficient supplies to meet municipal, tribal, industrial, agricultural, recreational, and environmental needs. I believe that water rights must be respected, and that disputes are better resolved not in the courts but through negotiations that build consensus. I understand the importance of state law and local prerogatives in the allocation of water resources, and that all levels of government must work together with stakeholders to ensure that our lifeblood is protected, managed, and utilized in a wise, just, and sustainable manner.

The Clean Water Act is one of our most successful environmental laws. As president I will work to develop policies that provide necessary protection of our aquatic resources, build strong and lasting partnerships, and respect local conditions and needs.

D: While the number of landfills in the United States has shrunk over the past 20 years from 8,000 to 1,700, we now create twice as much waste. Do you have any plans to create incentives for manufacturers to develop environmentally friendly products? And how should we deal with the growth of hazardous consumer waste, including electronics and compact fluorescent light bulbs?

JM: I am proud of my long-standing commitment to conserving America’s natural resources and promoting environmental stewardship. I know we face immense environmental challenges that will impact the quality of life we leave our children and future generations. Essential to this commitment is promoting an ethos of conservation across our nation. I will lead by example and will make greening the federal government a priority of my administration. The federal government is the largest electricity consumer on earth and occupies 3.3 billion square feet of space worldwide. It provides an enormous opportunity to lead by example. By applying a higher efficiency standard to new buildings leased or purchased or retrofitting existing buildings, we can save taxpayers money in energy costs and move the construction market in the direction of green technology to reduce waste and consumption.

TK: What are your plans for alternative energy investments and research, as well as for the tactical implementation of different power sources?

JM: I will encourage the market for alternative, low-carbon energy sources as well as wind, hydro, and solar power. According to the Department of Energy, wind could provide as much as one-fifth of our electricity by 2030. The U.S. solar energy industry continued its double-digit annual growth rate in 2006. Also, across the country, water is currently the leading renewable-energy source used by electric utilities to generate electric power. Developing these and other sources of renewable energy will require that we rationalize the current patchwork of temporary tax credits that provide commercial feasibility. I voted against the patchwork of tax credits for renewable power in the past because they were temporary and reflected special interests, not what was the best policy. Because of the urgent need to reform our energy portfolio, I will put in place real support for these sources of energy in the form of permanent credits that are fair, level, and rational, letting the market decide which ideas can move us toward clean and renewable energy.

TK: During World War II Franklin Delano Roosevelt called upon the automakers in Detroit to do their part for the war and repurpose their facilities to make military equipment. The automakers complied, but it took tough talk and convincing. Do the private sector and the public today need a similar call to arms? If so, what is it?

JM: Climate change is the single greatest environmental challenge of our time. The facts of global warming demand our urgent attention, especially in Washington. Not only does our dependence on foreign oil bring about sizable national security risks, but the preponderance of scientific evidence points to the warming of our climate from the burning of fossil fuels. We can no longer deny our responsibility to lead the world in reducing our carbon emissions.

A cap-and-trade system harnesses human ingenuity in the pursuit of alternatives to carbon-based fuels. Market participants are allotted total permits equal to the cap on greenhouse-gas emissions. If they can invent, improve, or acquire a way to reduce their emissions, they can sell their extra permits for cash. The profit motive will coordinate the efforts of venture capitalists, corporate planners, entrepreneurs, and environmentalists on the common motive of reducing emissions.

TK: What is the most imminent danger brought on by climate change, and what are you going to do about it?

JM: The burning of oil and other fossil fuels is contributing to the dangerous accumulation of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere, altering our climate with the potential for major social, economic, and political upheaval. The world is already feeling the powerful effects of global warming, and far more dire consequences are predicted if we let the growing deluge of greenhouse-gas emissions continue and wreak havoc with God’s creation. A group of senior retired military officers recently warned about the potential upheaval caused by conflicts over water, arable land, and other natural resources under strain from a warming planet.

As president, I will submit to Congress a cap-and-trade system to set clear limits on all greenhouse-gas emissions, while also allowing the sale of rights to excess emissions. We will cap emissions according to specific goals, measuring progress by reference to past carbon emissions. By the year 2012 we will seek a return to 2005 levels of emission; by 2020, a return to 1990 levels; and so on until we have achieved a reduction of at least 60 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050. In the course of time, it may be that new ideas and technologies will come along that we can hardly imagine today, allowing all industries to change with a speed that will surprise us. More likely, however, there will be some companies that need extra emissions rights, and they will be able to buy them. The system to meet these targets and timetables will give these companies extra time to adapt—and that is good economic policy. The cap-and-trade system will create jobs, improve livelihoods, and strengthen futures across our country.

Despite all the wonders modern technology has dumped on us, it has yet to create a foolproof, fraudproof way for 150 million Americans to vote. But while the nation’s smartest computer scientists and cryptography experts have been busy churning out ideas to solve our voting woes once and for all, their efforts may be moot if we can’t figure out how to get eligible voters registered in the first place.

You’d think that after the last election’s slew of technological fiascoes, states would have ironed out their database woes. Not so: Wired (via ABC News) reports that glitches in states’ voter databases are as bountiful as always, and could wind up leaving thousands disenfranchised. The biggest issue is the haphazard creation of centralized databases, which were mandated for federal elections following the debacle of 2000. The law’s intent, as usual, was to do good—consolidating voter lists into a single database would presumably simplify the process and keep voters from being arbitrarily turned away at the polls.

Unfortunately, as with voting machines, the reality has been closer to chaos: The databases, which are unregulated by any federal agency, have been plagued by human error, confusion, cost overloads, and a smörgåsbord of other mess-ups.

During the primaries earlier this year, several states found themselves in hot water with problems such as names being deleted from the voter roll, party affiliations randomly getting switched, and birth dates being changed. The end result, of course, was that would-be voters were unable to cast their ballots.

There’s also the disaster-waiting-to-happen of record matching, in which a voter’s name, social security number, etc. must all match up if he/she wants to fill out a ballot—a policy that Florida is already championing. And if a database error has mismatched names or numbers? Too bad—better luck in 2012.

Now the New York Times brings to light another glitch: As a million-plus homeowners foreclose on their mortgages, so may they also lose their right to vote. Many states require voters to provide a current address before a cutoff date of October 6. Given the turmoil of losing your house in foreclosure, few of the unfortunate have updated their information with the state’s database. The Obama camp has been rushing to ensure that these unlucky foreclosers don’t also lose their votes—a wise move, given that the majority of subprime crisis casualties are lower-income and members of minority groups, and thus far more likely to support Obama.

Image: Flickr/zedtozee

• Congratulations to Andy Revkin, New York Times reporter and DISCOVER alum, on winning the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, which is given to journalists who provide excellent reporting on “stories that simmer instead of explode”—though whether global warming falls into the former category or the latter remains to be seen.

• DrugMonkey sounds off on the “broken” NIH grant review system.

• The National Institute of Mental Health calls off a study on chelation in children. Why? Because it was dangerous and “unethical.” No kidding.

• We here in Mother Russia do not like silly American “Google.”

• Is media sensationalism a product of evolution?

• No politician is safe! An activist group hacks into Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail account, leaving McCain grateful that he doesn’t know how to use the Internet.

• Which scientific experts should the next U.S. president appoint to guide him? The National Academy of Sciences has a few ideas—and they’re happy to share.

Jost started off by discussing the “Big Five Model of Personality,” which, according to his results, offers clues about the minds of hardcore liberals versus their conservative counterparts.

He found that liberals ranked themselves consistently higher on the “creativity and openness to new experiences” scale, while conservatives did the same for “conscientiousness and order & discipline/rule following.” These traits also manifested themselves in the subjects’ “behavioral residue,” with liberals having more colorful and cluttered bedrooms and offices while conservatives’ spaces were tidier and more scrubbed.

Jost then discussed the body of research on the relationship between political views and perceived threats. In particular, data has shown that reminders of death—from disturbing images to words briefly flashed on a screen—caused all people, regardless of political beliefs, to increase support for conservative ideas across the topical spectrum, from same-sex marriage to foreign policy. The latest of these studies, for example, found that the greater a person’s sensitivity to disturbing images—a large spider on a face, a maggot-filled wound—the higher a chance he or she had of supporting a conservative agenda.

All of which presents interesting questions about the influence of neurobiology on ballot casting, and how a predisposition for sensitivity to threats can push you towards a party. But what about the current election? Given that the current administration has overseen such massive, recent turmoil—not to mention that, for the first time in recent history, the GOP is running with a VP candidate that many consider unsafe—could that upset the balance for threat-sensitive voters? Maybe, said Jost, who told DISCOVER in an e-mail:

I think it’s possible that threat and uncertainty could work against the GOP this election, but *only* if (1) voters decide that Republicans are primarily to blame for creating financial, foreign policy, and environmental crises through bad policies, and (2) the Democrats are able to convince voters that they have sound solutions that will definitely work to fix the problems caused by conservative policies.

So there you have it. The first part shouldn’t be all that hard. And the second—well, guess we’ll have to wait and see.