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Global Political Positioning System, The
+ISM Global political
positioning system.
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By PAUL TOUGH
Published: December 12, 2004
 et's say you somehow find yourself stuck behind enemy lines
in the new divided America -- a Democrat in suburban Dallas, say, or a Republican in
the East Village. Surely there's someone around who thinks the way
you do; but how to locate that lonesome kindred spirit? Now there's
a solution: a simple application you can install on your BlackBerry
or cellphone (preferably the latest kind, equipped with G.P.S.) that
displays the precise redness and blueness of the spot where you're
standing -- and points you in the direction of redder or bluer
neighborhoods nearby.
The program is called RedBlue (pronounced ''red or blue''), and
it is the invention of Jason Uechi, a partner in a New York
advertising firm who is also a serious tech-head. In January, Uechi
stumbled across an innovative Web project called Fundrace.org, which
uses publicly available information from the Federal Election
Commission to create maps of various cities showing the exact source
of every donation of more than $200 to Republican or Democratic
candidates or committees. The data generate a vivid image of
political geography. The New York City map, unsurprisingly, shows mostly blue
dots, for Democratic donors, and the map turns a deep aquamarine on
the Upper West Side. But there are also some big red circles,
denoting Republican givers, mostly clustered on the Upper East Side
and around Wall Street.
Uechi borrowed the Fundrace database, wrote some Java code and
created a program that users can download onto their phones. He
released it in October and offered it free to most users. When you
fire it up, the G.P.S. sensor in your phone figures out where you
are and which way you're facing, and using the Fundrace data, shows
you pre-election donations for each party from the neighborhood
you're in. And it can expand its radius to 60 miles, and let you
know where to head to find more Republicans or Democrats.
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