I third this. I had an N810 but the interface was sluggish and the keyboard was "squishy". All in all, very unsatisfying. Sold it on eBay. The iPod Touch is a big improvement, IMHO.

I definitely like Nebraska's implementation. By using district-by-district results it keeps the normally gargantuan presidential at a local level.

I would argue that the existing "winner takes all" method of the electoral college encourages people to not bother voting. To wit: the presidential campaigns focus on a few critical states that are close in the polling data. By ignoring the rest of the country this implies to the people of the other 40+ states that their votes don't matter. The people in these other states don't see the campaigns and they are told by the media that their state is already decided. Why bother voting?

It seems like the executive decisions should be based on the needs of the people equally. The current system gives extra representation to the people in the small states. Why should their vote count for more than a person in a big state? For example, a person in Wyoming gets 4x the voting power of someone in Texas, as shown in the 9th column here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population

I've tried to make an HTPC but I could never get the remote working properly. Are you able to put the machine into standby using the remote? I'm interested in saving power as much as possible.

The New York Times has introduced an API that will help with data mining for congressional voting. Hopefully the budgeting aspect is included. http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/introducing-the-congress-api/