Abridged Mid-Holiday Edition

• We’re back! We’ll be posting shorter — but still relevant and, we hope, smart — versions of the daily digest this week as we rebound from one holiday and gear up for the next.
• The Washington Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas and Shailagh Murray tackle the knawing question of whether young voters will actually show up to caucus in Iowa on January 3rd. Past experiences, like the Dean campaign’s Iowa meltdown in 2004, have shown that student excitement hasn’t always turned into physical appearances. But this year folks are hit with a barrage of messages urging them to show up, including requests to join Facebook groups like one called “I pledge to caucus for Barack Obama on January 3rd” (954 members). Stumbling blocks include apathy and timing (many college students will be home for winter break), but fervor for candidates like Ron Paul could reel them in. If the millenials do show up, “It could have kind of an interesting positive impact,” political scientist Steffen Schmidt told Vargas and Murray. But “We’re all guessing because it’s never happened.”
• CNET’s News.com calls 2007 “a year of largely unfinished business—or, less charitably, unfulfilled promises—for high-tech companies.” Writer Ann Broache is disappointed that there’s been little movement, or a movement against, tech-centric issues like H-1B visas, Net neutrality, and e-voting. Thankfully (cough-distraction-cough) Congress has continued to focus on how the Internets is hurtin yer children. (via Tech Daily Dose)
• Why is the Ron Paul blimp flying high while John Edwards was refused public matching funds for money raised with ActBlue? Michael Cornfield and Tova Andrew Wang write at the Century Foundation about how these two instances of mass small donation are being treated differently by the FEC. They determine that by refusing Edwards his matching funds — the money was donated by individuals but harnessed by ActBlue, which is technically a PAC — “The FEC is following form and ignoring substance with no regard for the intent of the law, which was to ensure that individuals did not contribute more than the legal limit to a campaign organization by funneling money through different entities.” Meanwhile the organizers of the Ron Paul blimp have exploited legal loopholes to get airborne. The writers argue that next election season, we shouldn’t “create perverse incentives that reward those who flout the rules, while indirectly punishing those willing to play by them.”
• Last week we mentioned that Slashdot was compiling questions from its readers for Garrett Graff, who’s promoting his new book The First Campaign. Graff has answered their questions in a fun interview that, in Slashdot fashion, is followed by 123 comments that range from the politically astute to the asinine. Then there are the Paulites…
• So just who are these Paulites that we always speak of? As an investigation by the new NPR show the Bryant Park Project showed, Ron Paul supporters come in all shapes and sizes. A simple call to his fans (“Ron Paul supporters, we’d love to hear who you are”) garnered more than 3,000 responses, and the Biving Report’s Steve Peterson noticed that not all of those who wrote in fit the Paulite stereotype (young, white, male, techie). Namely, some are neither young nor male, and may or may not be techies, and many have never been involved in politics before. It’s unclear if many of the commenters were white, or if they’ve ever helped launch a blimp before.