Well, whether you voted for him or not, history was made yesterday as Barack Obama was elected President of the United States by 52% of voters, a healthy electoral margin, and victories in Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, and probably even North Carolina. How was your election night?

A brief note on the Indian reaction: though some Indian papers are a little nervous about Obama’s anti-outsourcing rhetoric, for the most part India appears to be as enthusiastic as the rest of the world about the prospect of a President Obama. Manmohan Singh, for instance, described the victory as “extraordinary”. Also see this list of pros and cons in the Economic Times, and this story, which has executives from Wipro and TCS expressing satisfaction with Obama’s grasp of the realities of the globalization era.

Meanwhile, Ashwin Madia lost in Minnesota’s 3rd District to Erik Paulson. The numbers were something like 48% to 40%, with a curiously large 8% plus voting for “other” candidates.

It’s somewhat disappointing, but it is worth noting that Madia is just 30 years old, and he was running in a district long held by Republicans:

With a lack of real political experience, Madia, a former lawyer and Iraq war veteran ran on a campaign of ideals. Over and over again he told voters that he didn’t need experience in St. Paul, that he had experience in Baghdad. He often started his speeches with the tale of his parents’ immigration from India. They came here nearly 40 years ago with just $19, and today their son is running for U.S. Congress. The American Dream, Madia would often say, is still very much alive in this county.

His message did not change Tuesday night as he conceded. “Even though we lost this election tonight, we didn’t lose the debate,” said Madia, 30, as he addressed disappointed supporters in Osso. “Our message was right on. I may not have been the right messenger, but our message was right, this idea that our country can do better than what we have been doing.” (link)

We may have more to say about this once there is more data about why voters did what they did. Continue reading →

Barack Obama was elected president tonight and also won the state of Minnesota. Still too close to call however, is the Ashwin Madia vs. Erik Paulsen race in the 3rd Congressional district. As of midnight central time and with 49% of the precincts reporting, Madia trails 47 to ~42%.

While we wait for the final result I want to leave you with this clip I took of a speech Madia gave in Denver during the DNC. During the speech he spoke passionately about being relentless and putting everything you have into your race once you decide to run for office. Win or lose I remember thinking at the time it was great advice for anyone thinking of running.

Continue reading →

Sure today is about presidents, pundits and pandering. We’ve blogged macacas, Obamas and Madias. But today is Election Day, and not only is today the day to vote, but we need to make sure that this vote is counted.

I am getting up at the crack of dawn to partake in protecting the rights of Asian and Pacific Islander voters all across Southern California. There are already other stories coming out of the woodwork – one friend of mine registered to vote but couldn’t be found on the rolls, and another friend stood in a five hour line at the Los Angeles Registrar of Voter to vote early on Friday. On Election Day, the stories are expected to be tenfolds worse and poll monitors will be sent to polls all across the nation to keep the suppression at a minimum. If you haven’t signed up to volunteer with an official organization, you can grab your camera and Video the Vote or document your story.

I stole the following Q&A from a post I did for Sepia Mutiny during the 2006 Election, but it still works, for the most part.

What do I do if I requested an absentee ballot/registered to vote and haven’t received anything yet? You should go to your polling place and vote in person, and if they don’t have your name, you should vote provisionally. They have to give you a provisional ballot – they’ll verify over the next week to see what the problem is and if they count it. If you’re too far from your polling place, call your Secretary of State’s office or the hotline.

What if I have my absentee form, but I forgot to mail it? Take your absentee form to your local polling place and drop it off in person.

What if I go to vote and they don’t have my name? Vote provisionally. If you have your voter registration receipt, that is your proof of registration. And call the hotline.

Do I need to bring ID to vote? It depends on what state you live in, though as organizers we feel that asking for a voter ID is a form of disenfranchisement and are continuously battling this. But here in CA, I’m pretty sure if you are a first time voter that didn’t put down a CA DL number or SS # on your reg form, they will ask for your ID. If they ask for your ID, and you live in a state/situation where you don’t need an ID, call the hotline.

What if I don’t know where I’m supposed to go and vote? Simple go to the Polling Place Finder.

I didn’t get any information from my registrar’s info on who I’m voting for. What should I do? You should still vote, at your nearest polling place. To figure out what you are voting for before you go to your polling place, go to Smart Voter. With a quick submit of your address, they can find you all the candidates and propositions for your district. If they don’t have your name in their list, VOTE PROVISIONALLY.

It’s already 7:30 pm, and there will be this long line at the polls, and by the time I get there, I’ll be turned away… Most employers will give you two hours to go vote today, be sure to ask to see if you can get out early, or do it on your lunch break. Polls are open from 7am to 8pm. All you have to do is go stand in line before 8pm – as long as you are in line, they can’t turn you away. If they try to, or if they closed your poll early, call the hotline. [SepiaMutiny]

There is a national Election Protection hotline that I HIGHLY recommend that you scrawl on the back of your hand before leaving the house today: 1-866-OUR-VOTE. The Election Protection site has gotten tech-savvy since 2006, and there are up to the minute updates on stories of suppression across the country. If you have questions about the voting process and don’t want to call the hotline, please enter them in the comment section or e-mail me at taz[at]saavy.org and I’ll do my best. If you have stories of voting today, whether positive experiences or stories of voter suppression, please enter them in the comments as well – I’d love to hear the desi experience on voting all across the country. It’d also be interesting to see if desis get unfairly targeted for the denial of voting rights.

And in case it wasn’t obvious, GO VOTE! Continue reading →

This article buried in the Saturday’s New York Times reports that the Obama campaign has invested heavily in microtargeting.

Microtargeting uses computers and mathematical models to take disparate bits of information about voters — the cars they own, the groups they belong to, the magazines they read — and analyze it in a way to predict how likely a person is to vote and what issues and values are most important to him. Often these analyses turn up surprising results; for instance, Democrats have taken advantage of the fact that many evangelical Christians are open to hearing a pro-environmental message.

Though this is technique has long been favored by the Republican party, especially during the 2000 Bush campaign, even Republicans agree that he “Obama campaign has appropriated it and taken it to a new level.”

One of the largest data banks is Catalist, a for-profit company that specializes in providing data for the Obama campaign. Turns out its chief technology officer is 34 year old Vijay Ravindran, former director of the ordering-services group at Amazon.com, where he led a team of about 130 engineers who built and maintained the site’s “shopping cart.

From the Washington Post:

The work being done in Catalist’s McPherson Square offices—which, with its multiscreen computer terminals, resembles a Silicon Valley start-up—is helping revolutionize the fields known as data mining and microtargeting. … Catalist was founded in August 2005 by Harold Ickes, the longtime Clinton deputy White House chief of staff, after the 2004 campaign to address the Democrats’ inability to harness data. One of the first hires was a young engineer, Vijay Ravindran. … “With my hiring, he made a decision that this was going to be a real company,” Ravindran says. As the chief data-architecture guy at Catalist, he’s part of a new trend in political technology: As data become more important in campaigning, candidates are increasingly turning to the tech industry for business-level expertise.

In a feature on political strategists and microtargeting, from fastcompany.com [via the newstab, thanks brijo1], Ravindran says:

“In the political space, I felt it was very important to build a computing architecture that would take in real-time data, get them into a standardized format, and then load them into a place where they could be snapshotted out for particular purposes. That didn’t exist before. Now we have an architecture that scales more than 15 terabytes of data while providing an interface for users to work with. We expect to leave this election cycle with a piece of permanent infrastructure that enables groups to do microtargeting more efficiently than ever before. It all boils down to one principle: Leave no data behind.”

Below the fold is a video where Ravindran talks a little bit about what he does. Continue reading →

As the election nears, it is crucial to understand just how important this election will be for our community. Just a few years ago, the concept of major South Asian campaign groups, let along major South Asian candidates, was unthinkable. South Asians were a small group that didn’t get out to the polls in sizable numbers and those who did were usually spoken to solely on the issues of immigration and U.S.-India relations. This election, however, has dramatically changed the nature of the South Asian community’s involvement in politics. India Post recently had a great piece where they highlighted a few young South Asians who have been making their voice heard this election season, and it gives a good overview of how our community has mobilized this year.

The article profiles South Asians from a variety of backgrounds, all motivated to become active during this election season for different reasons. Bhavini Dhoshi, 25, is “currently working as a legal intern for a not-for-profit immigration services organization,” and especially cares about reproductive rights, the environment, and healthcare, amongst other issues. Shashi Dholandas, a 24-year old young law student, counts “the current state of the economy and the US standing in the international arena” as his major concerns. Niki Shah, an organizer with South Asians for Obama, says “My generation is overburdened with the cost of education. We want a decent education but the attached cost may outweigh the long-term benefits.”

The profiles are interesting and definitely worth a read, and are notable because of the breadth of interests and activities of the surveyed group. The article does mention U.S.-India relations, and these are surely important issues for members of our community, be they immigrants who once called a South Asian nation their home, or the children of those immigrants. Yet for every single young South Asian, these issues were secondary to topics such as healthcare, the environment, the war, or the economy.

At the DNC, Hrishi Karthikeyan, the founder of South Asians for Obama, noted that one of the reasons he started SAFO was because he wanted politicians and campaigns to realize that there were many South Asians for whom every issue was important, just as they would be for any American. For far too long, politicians had felt as though they only needed to talk to South Asians about issues such as immigration and U.S.-India relations, and they would have their vote. The massive activation in this campaign is changing this perception as more South Asians get involved and voice their concerns on every issue of importance. In this campaign, Indian-Americans have played a major role in issues concerning foreign policy, domestic policy, and finance, amongst other issues. Over the past year, one Indian-American has shined as the governor of a very Southern state while another is in a tight congressional race in Minnesota.

South Asians have worked hard in this election to rise from a small niche group to an important part of the electorate. Groups such as SAFO, Asian Americans for Obama, and non-partisan groups including SAALT have put forth their best efforts to transform the South Asian vote into a prominent piece of the American electoral map. It will all be for naught, however, if we don’t vote en masse this Tuesday. So tomorrow, your vote is not only about the direction of this country, but our community’s place in the American political spectrum. The choice between non-voting and voting is the choice between leaving our community a niche group that will always be on the periphery of the political scene or helping us emerge as a crucial bloc that can make our voices heard for many elections to come. Continue reading →