Prior to the elections, CNET News.com graded Congress on technology votes covering such topics as the federal Can-Spam Act, taxing online purchases and making the ban on Net-access taxes permanent.
Considering that the election was supposedly about big ticket items like Iraq and Congressional corruption, it seems that arcana like Net neutrality wouldn’t have captured the public interest.
That’s probably true of most of the country, but not necessarily in the geographic regions with a large population of high tech workers.
Here’s a rundown of how the highest and lowest-rated Senators and Representatives who were up for reelection fared.
Senate:
George Allen (R, VA) who scored highest among Republicans, was defeated.
Maria Cantwell (D, WA), the highest-scoring Democrat, was reelected.
Daniel Akaka (D, HI), the lowest-scoring Democrat, was also reelected.
Mike DeWine (R, OH), the lowest-scoring Republican, was defeated.
House:
Zoe Lofgren(D, CA) and Ellen Tauscher(D, CA), the highest-scoring Democrats, and Ron Paul (D, TX), the highest-scoring Republican, all were reelected.
The lowest-scoring Democrats were all re-elected: John Barrow (GA), John Salazar (CO) and Pete Visclosky (IN), as were the lowest-scoring Republicans: Geoff Davis (KY) and Lynn Westmoreland (GA).
In other words, a zero net gain or loss. The point is, though, that California, Washington and Texas, all of which have solid high tech communities, returned their pro-tech Congress people to office.
Maybe someone in those states actually was paying attention.