Archive: Year: 2015

09/20/2015

[caption id="attachment_3156" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Jake Brewer speaking at PDF 2014[/caption]The civic tech community and our Civic Hall/Personal Democracy family lost one of its giants yesterday. Jake Brewer was killed while on a charity bike ride outside of Washington, DC. He was 34 and leaves a spouse, Mary Katharine Ham, a two-year-old daughter, Georgia, and a child on the way. Jake had just stepped into "the job of a lifetime" as senior technology advisor at the White House. Before that he was the head of global policy, external affairs and new product development for Change.org for two years. Prior to that he was a partner at the new media firm Fission Strategy and the strategic communications director for U.S. Ignite, and in...

09/10/2015

Voting in New York’s multi-party system“This is the most confusing presidential election in my memory,” a young friend of mine said to me the other day. And yes, at first glance, things seem quite unusual, even for a year when both parties are having competitive primaries. After all, neither Donald Trump nor Bernie Sanders, who are each doing remarkably well right now in their respective bids for the Republican and Democratic nominations, seem at home inside those parties.Trump is a nominal Republican who was just forced to sign a pledge to back the Republican nominee (in the event it isn’t him), and the GOP establishment has to hope that he still doesn’t bolt to run as an independent. And Sanders...