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Global Political Positioning System, The
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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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