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Why I Don't Worry About Voter Registration FraudOctober 10

Every four years during the month before the presidential election, national news sites run stories about voter registration fraud. This year, the target of much of the stories is a non-profit organization called ACORN that knocks on doors across the country and registers voters.

Not surprisingly, they end up with some bad data. In some cases, canvassers are paid for productivity and end up falsifying voter registrations to improve their personal performance.

This is reported as scandalous, but I don't care.

Why?

Because there is a HUGE difference between voter registration fraud and actual voter fraud. You can put as many names as you want on the voter rolls but unless someone shows up at the polls on election day to actually vote under the false names, there was no fraud.

What's most humorous is hearing the press read names of fraudulent registrations under names like Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. Do you think your vote is going to be countered by someone showing up at the polls to vote under the name of a cartoon mouse or duck? Not a problem.

Legitimate voting concerns should focus on efforts to keep people from voting. That's a real problem that really does impact elections.

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Book of the Month:

Gary Vaynerchuk: Online Marketing OptimismOctober 8

When consulting with businesses on where they should allocate their ad dollars today, my most common response is, "Start online, measure everything, and spend as much online as you can justify. Then look at other options." It sounds like Wine Library's Gary Vaynerchuk takes a similar approach for his own business, as he explains here:

What do you think? Are you aware of any forms of offline advertising that measurably beat what can be done online today?

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Book of the Month: The Driver: My Dangerous Pursuit of Speed and Truth in the Outlaw Racing World
Gadget of the Month: Kensington Mini Battery Extender and Charger for iPod and iPhone
Web Site of the Month: Google Docs - Used to Write Technology Evangelist Posts
Technology Evangelist Podcasts: Subscribe to Podcast Feed
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Top Blog Posts for September 2008October 1

- The Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader and iRex Iliad on Twin Cities Live
- Aggregate vs. Detailed Data - Zillow.com
- DexKnows.com, Minneapolis Pizza, & Blog Payola
- A Message to Newly Hired PR Professionals
- Are You Noticing a Broadband Price War?

DexKnows.com, Minneapolis Pizza, & Blog PayolaSeptember 30

I was recently perusing a blog called "THE Facts on Print Yellow Pages" when I stumbled across a post about Minneapolis pizza.

Being a Minneapolis resident and a big fan of Pizza, I checked out what this site had to say about this very important topic (to me, at least):

I clicked through to the post referenced on the above site to find this blog post:

That looked strange to me. Notice how the two outgoing links are both tied to specific keywords? And why is someone so excited about the Minneapolis phone book that they're actually blogging about it? This smelled like rotten fish rather than freshly cooked pizza to me.

It turns out that the person blogging about the Minneapolis phone book actually lives in Arkansas. Strange, eh?

The blogger who wrote the post has a link to PayPerPost on their site. Ah, I wonder is this happened to be a pa

Aggregate vs. Detailed Data - Zillow.comSeptember 24

According to Zillow.com, the home I purchased last fall has increased by 70% in less than a year:

While I wish that was so, I have a hunch that any real estate agent I talked to would collapse if I suggested listing the property for what Zillow suggests.

There are two upward spikes in the green line on the graph that represents what Zillow has thought my home was worth over the past decade.

The first, a year ago, is when I purchased the house for WAY more than Zillow said it was worth at the time.

The second is when Zillow decided that the house was worth WAY more than I paid for it.

So which is it?

Neither.

But, if you look at a large enough set of data, Zillow's numbers are probably pretty good. Notice the trend of the Yellow line. That represents the median price of homes in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

But here's the problem: I already know that my home is a bit above average if you take the entire city into consideration. You don't need to show me a graph to explain that concept to me. What I care about is my OWN house, and I know that data is broken.

So what exactly is the value of this data beyond inspir