2012 presidential candidates of both parties ignore tech as key election issue

As a small note, this post is utterly nonpartisan. If you are here looking for a fight, I recommend this. 

A short survey of the main websites of the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, and the Democratic candidate, underscores one serious point: technology is no hot ticket in their eyes. In fact, across the websites belonging to Mitt Romney, New Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Barack Obama, it’s a real mission to find anything about technology at all.

It could be argued that each candidate’s policies regarding business as a whole, and in some instances small businesses and startups, are technology related. That’s reasonable. But a fair reading of each candidate’s website makes it very obvious that while certain business topics are in the campaign bullseye, technology topics proper, are not.

This is somewhat surprising. Given that the current climate in technology, especially in regards to policy, is hot. Across the United States, recent actions by the government have ignited impassioned protests, and the technology business community has been quite active in saying its piece. And yet, the pool of candidates from which we will draw our next president is essentially ignoring the entire topic.

This is disappointing, and makes a point that I am going to be hitting on over the next few months: the technology community needs to step up, and make its issues part of the mainstream political discussion. If you want some more notes on the topic as a starter, head here.

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I find it ludicrous that all five websites that the candidates are using as issue platforms and fundraising juggernauts, and to push such issues as a war on porn, have no mention of tech proper, which is a dynamo of growth. For too long has tech been content as a fundraising stop on the road to the White or State House.

As a final note, I would say that the current President’s history of tech, his usage of it as a campaign weapon in 2008 was groundbreaking, makes his current lack of discussion of its issues all the odder.