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Many Americans have already participated in early voting, but millions more will be voting this Election Day on November 4, 2008. If you follow me on Twitter, you’re already aware of my political views and my support for Barack Obama. Whether or not you agree with my choice, I know you’ll agree that as citizens we have the right and duty to vote, and to do our part to make sure the voting process is fair. As digital citizens, there are many ways to do this. I wanted to highlight a few that have come to my attention and urge you to take part.
Use Twitter to Report Your Voting Experience
Twitter Vote Report is an all-volunteer network of software developers, designers, and other collaborators have teamed up to help provide a way for citizens to report their voting experience.
There are a few ways to do this, including:
1) Send a text message to 66937 reporting the conditions at your voting place. Start the text message with #votereport.
2) Download the free iPhone app and use it to report your voting experience. There’s also a “votereport” app at the Google Android marketplace.
3) If you’re already on Twitter, just include #votereport in your tweets to have it show up on the Twitter Vote Report site.
Video Your Polling Place and Election Experience
Video the Vote is “a national initiative to protect voting rights by monitoring the electoral process. We organize citizen journalists - ordinary folks like you and me - to document election problems as they occur. And then we distribute their footage to the mainstream media and online to make sure the full story of Election Day gets told.” To get involved, just visit the site, signup and upload your video. They’ll cross post to YouTube for you.
Current.tv Election 2008 is asking for citizen video from election day. “All you have to do is shoot a short [under 10 min] video getting election night reactions from people and footage of election night parties, roughly edit it together, upload it by Wed. November 5th, tag it “Election Night 2008” and we may include it in our special election coverage.”
Video Your Vote is a project between YouTube and PBS to share election day experiences. “Shoot a video of your voting experience before or on Delection Day. Document the energy and excitement, as well as any problems you may see. On November 4th submit your footage here and watch videos from voters across the country.” You can also upload mobile videos to http://m.youtube.com/videoyourvote from your mobile phone.
Photograph Your Polling Place
The Polling Place Photo Project is “a nationwide experiment in citizen journalism that encourages voters to capture, post and share photographs of this year’s primaries, caucuses and general election.” It’s easy to participate. Simply take a photo that documents your voting experience, including what worked and what could be improved. “We’re looking of photos of interiors, exteriors and other views that are part of your voting experience. Obviously, you need to follow the rules at your local polling place, and you should be respectful of other citizens who may not wish to be photographed.”
Once you have your photo (or up to five photos per submission) you can post your photo, citing some basic information: name and location of polling place, time, type of ballot. Also visit the site to browse other people’s photos. The Project is a program of The New York Times and AIGA, the professional association for design. William Drenttel of Design Observer initiated the project in 2006.
Get Involved
I’ll be at my polling place early Tuesday morning with the Vote Report app on my phone, Flip video and digital camera in hand. Will you? Let me know in the comments if you participate in some form of citizen journalism on Election Day and don’t forget to remind everyone you know to go vote!
UPDATE 11/4: Another citizen journalism project is by the BBC World Service to document the US Elections. Please contribute photos, videos, audio and experiences.
UPDATE 11/4 at 5:10pm PST. Below are the photos from my polling place in San Francisco. No problems voting. Used paper ballots with an optical scanner. There was one touchscreen available but no one was using it.
Want real-time updates when I post? Follow emilychang on Twitter
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Emily Chang is an award-winning strategic designer and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes.com, a web consultancy in San Francisco that focuses on the design and user experience of next generation websites, social applications and networked communities. Learn more...
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2 comment(s)
Emily, this is great. Thanks for being a rockstar and putting this together! Gobama!
Nice post. i love it. i love your site. i will bookmark it. will back again later. Thank you
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