Welcome to Axis ProRata, a podcast that takes just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech business and politics.

I'm Dan Pramak on today's show, why we might be about to learn a whole lot more about SpaceX and some pretty invasive new identification technology in China.

But first, the midterms. Of course the midterms. As you almost certainly know by now,

Democrats have taken back the House of Representatives while Republicans have increased their

edge in the Senate. And that shouldn't be too surprising since it's what almost everybody

thought was going to happen. Not only because of some of the general polling, but also because,

as we noted on Monday, Democrats were on offense in the House with

lots of retiring Republicans and on defense in the Senate, where they had to defend an unusually

large number of red state seats. So we'll get into all the numbers and takeaways in a minute

with Axios editor-in-chief Nick Johnston. But first, I want to kind of focus on something a little

broader, which is that the midterms should have been and hopefully were a giant bat signal to Silicon Valley, asking for help.

Not in terms of electing certain politicians or parties, but in terms of polling, which was

still way off in some key races, and also in terms of the actual equipment on which we

used to vote.

So in terms of polling, a big problem for pollsters over the past several years has been finding likely voters.

It used to be easy, just consult the phone book and ask, but it's become more difficult in the mobile era.

Moreover, it clearly seems there is a certain segment of Americans, mostly Trump-leaning Americans,

who either aren't being captured by pollsters currently or who aren't telling them the truth.

Now, Silicon Valley has become very good at gauging our interests and sentiments, mostly to sell us stuff.

Maybe they could also help tell us what we're buying at the polls.

And as for those polls, please fix the equipment.

It is absurd that so many people waited so long to vote for the sole reason that the machines didn't work because of moisture or missing power cords or faulty wiring.

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