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Wisconsin election infrastructure is mostly secure — but inaccurate counts are hard to catch and correct

John Bassett

October 10, 2020 |

Channel 3000 |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Wisconsin

Same-day voter registration and the implementation of advanced cyberdefenses have bolstered Wisconsin's voting database, fortifying it against hackers and data breaches. Apprehension about election security prompted the formation of a watchdog group, Wisconsin Election Integrity, which regularly prompts the Wisconsin Elections Commission to update and improve the existing systems. Some machines have been identified as risky and measures to safely use and secure them are underway.

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In Rio, Mapping Gunshots Can Backfire

Raphael Tsavkko Garcia

September 29, 2020 |

Bloomberg CityLab |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: Brazil, Rio de Janeiro

Crime-tracking mobile apps give millions of Brazilians crowdsourced data on urban violence, alerting people to dangerous places and filling gaps in government data on shootings, robberies, and other risks. But apps such as Fogo Cruzado (“Crossfire”) and Onde Tem Tiroteio (“Where There's a Shooting”) offer statistically crude glimpses of crime, distorted by media and racial biases that one expert blames for myths about the risks people actually face.

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Taiwan's Crowdsourced Democracy Shows Us How to Fix Social Media

Carl Miller

September 27, 2020 |

Reasons to be Cheerful |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: Taiwan

vTaiwan is a mixed-reality, scaled listening exercise used by the government as a new way to make decisions. The platform provides an online space for citizens to debate and for politicians to listen to. The government lays out political questions, such as regulating Uber or changing time zones, and people can share their feelings, agree and disagree, but divisive statements and trolling are not posted. After debating for a period of time it became apparent that people converged around points of consensus. The government has implemented about a dozen laws and regulations based on the discussions.

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The state's emergency child-care centers kept COVID-19 in check. Here's how

Stephanie Ebbert

September 22, 2020 |

The Boston Globe |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Massachusetts

Emergency child-care centers in Massachusetts have recorded only a small handful of cases of COVID-19 due to strict adherence to safety measures. Most notably, the centers have implemented a combination of contact tracing and mandatory two-week quarantine for anyone who could have been exposed, which applies to all school personnel, students, teachers, and family members.

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Can an Algorithm Help Solve Political Paralysis?

Julia Hotz

September 18, 2020 |

Scientific American |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United Kingdom

Citizen assemblies bring together residents for in-depth discussions about solutions to social issues. This alternative form of democracy led to policy changes in many countries, including legalizing abortion in Ireland. In the UK, an algorithm was applied to form a 110-person “climate assembly.” In a multistage process, the algorithm selected a representative sample of the U.K.’s population, sometimes oversampling harder to reach groups to ensure inclusion. A small stipend was also offered to offset costs for people with lower incomes. The group submitted a final report with climate policy recommendations.

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The Wayback Machine and Cloudflare Want to Backstop the Web

Lily Hay Newman

September 17, 2020 |

Wired |

Text |

Under 800 Words

Response Location: United States

The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine crawls and caches websites to preserve a history of deleted pages. The Wayback Machine has archived a large amount of the public web over the past two decades, adding more than a billion URLs a day to its databases. The archive has over 468 billion web pages in total, and more than 45 petabytes of data. A new partnership with the internet infrastructure company Cloudflare, which caches a static version of websites, has had promising results. Powering Cloudflare’s work with the Wayback Machine’s interface has allowed them to find more sites to archive.

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Health Board: Can't we all just get along?

Keith Hammonds

September 15, 2020 |

The Boulder Monitor |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Teton County, Montana

When the coronavirus pandemic complicated matters for local government, the Teton County public health office devised a process to enact state mandate that was effective, transparent, and led to rational decision-making. Although discord continued to a degree, the model is still providing guidance to Jefferson County as officials determine "how to best serve the public health interests of its residents."

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Women Data Scientists Created GPS-Driven App to Help Kenya Keep Covid-19 Numbers Low

Sharon Kiburi

September 11, 2020 |

Zenger News |

Multi-Media |

Under 800 Words

Response Location: Kenya

Women in GIS Kenya created a digital tool that helps the government track the number of Covid-19 cases, recoveries, and confirmed deaths, as well as the number of tests administered. The online database combines a survey that assesses a person's symptoms with cellphone GPS data to create a map of current hot spots and recommend treatment locations. The government credits the tool, which can also predict high-risk areas vulnerable to future outbreaks, with helping to keep Kenya's COVID-19-related deaths relatively low compared to other countries. The tool is popular among younger, tech-savvy populations.

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When contact tracing works, families, friends and co-workers avoid infection

Nate Morabito David Boraks

September 11, 2020 |

WCNC-TV |

Broadcast TV News |

3-5 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Charlotte, North Carolina

Health officials in North Carolina have shown that contact tracing can successfully identify those who have been exposed to COVID-19. The efforts of the contact tracers in one county resulted in 35 people being quarantined after an exposure to the virus during a child's birthday party, however that was only possible because of those individuals "were willing to be open and honest and forthcoming."

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Why Pennsylvania is ground zero for mail-in voting debate

Christa Case Bryant

September 04, 2020 |

The Christian Science Monitor |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Pennsylvania

Learning from the failures of the 2020 Pennsylvania primary, where a sharp increase in mail-in voting led to a 2-week delay in certifying election results and many ballots being invalidated, officials introduced a bill to address those problems. Anticipating 3 million mail-in presidential election ballots, the bill would allow mailed in ballots to be opened before election day, which is currently prohibited. The bill would also notify voters and allow them to prove their identity in the case of signature mismatches. While officials are optimistic, there is not much time left to pass and implement the bill.

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