Gunning for Geek Votes

Ars Technica reports: On the eve of Election Day, Barack Obama is aiming a final appeal at voters who care about tech policy, with a new YouTube video laying out the Democratic candidate's technology platform. But on several key issues, the difference between Obama and John McCain is the least significant policy bit.

Most of the stances articulated in the video should be familiar to readers of Obama's technology position paper. The Illinois senator pledges to double federal funding for basic research, to make permanent a tax credit for research and development, and to step up antitrust enforcement. He advocates expanding the H1-B visa program as part of "comprehensive immigration reform," and sets himself the task of making broadband Internet connections universally available. As surrogate Reed Hundt stressed at a New America Foundation event last week, he also envisions a more transparent and participatory government that makes more information available online, and provides venues for citizens to provide feedback on pending legislation or regulation.

Conspicuous by their omission are two of Obama's most distinctive technology positions. There is no mention of Obama's proposal to create a cabinet-level Chief Technology Officer to coordinate tech policy across federal agencies. Perhaps more significantly, there is no reference to network neutrality, perhaps the single tech issue on which the gap between Obama and McCain is most pronounced. At the 2007 Google talk, Obama declared he would "take a backseat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality, because once providers start to privilege some applications or Web sites over others, then the smaller voices get squeezed out and we all lose."

Assembled from snippets of Obama's November 2007 talk at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA, the video posted Sunday is one of a series of "Blueprint for Change" YouTube clips in which Obama lays out his positions in a particular issue area.

On the issues he does discuss -- with the notable exception of broadband policy -- Obama's position is often hard to distinguish from that of GOP nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona. While Obama drew applause from the Google crowd for his commitment to strengthening the H1-B visa program, our colleagues at Wired have noted that it's actually McCain who is the more unambiguous supporter of bringing in skilled technology workers, while Obama has been prone to more nativist-inflected rhetoric about preserving "American jobs," and called H1-B expansion a "stopgap measure."

McCain, like Obama, supports a permanent R&D tax credit, though McCain's proposal is for a 10 percent credit, which would be a decrease from the current rate of 14 percent. The recent bailout bill passed by Congress extended that credit through the end of 2009. Obama has not specified the level of the permanent credit he would seek.

Though Obama is widely perceived as the more tech-savvy candidate, a poll of IT workers released back in March found the Democratic and Republican candidates running even among techies.

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