The issue of possible voter fraud has been one that weighs heavily on my mind in recent days. After the debacle of the 2000 election with rampant voter fraud and faulty voting mechanisms, not to mention the 2004 election fiasco, I think all of us want to make sure our vote counts this year.

Lines for early voting are already wrapped around street corners and lasting for hours. If it is getting this much support in the days prior to the main election, it tells me that we want our votes to count. Whether we vote for Obama or McCain, we don’t want out votes counted among the wasted. This election cycle is just too important.

Can we do anything to ensure our votes are not wasted? I’m not sure if we can do anything “official” beyond keeping an eye on our votes and making sure to call a technician over BEFORE we leave the voting booth if we have a problem with a ballot or machine. However, you can do something to bring awareness.

Using camera phones, cameras, and social media applications like 12Seconds, Qik, Flixwagon and others, we can record our vote in real time. If enough of us record our votes via text messages, videos, photographs and other means, we can create a collective information center to combat any future allegations of voter issues.

Will citizen journalism do anything to help in the short term? Not really. It may make the thought of live recording or microblogging a voting process to encourage transparency more commonplace for the next election cycle, but for tis one the most you can hope for is to use it to find solidarity with comrades and colleagues alike.

On the other hand, having your camcorder, video enabled phone or flip cam may make a difference if you run across a machine that has been tampered with. By having a real time, live streaming record of problems, we may be able to get issues fixed before entire national elections are lost, just by sharing awareness. Couldn’t that make all the difference?

If you want to go into your local voting booth fully armed, make sure you grab a Qik, Flixwagon, Flickr, Tumblr or other micro media account before you vote, then take the tools needed to use them into the booth with you. Record your vote. You never know when it might matter that you have it saved for posterity.

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Entry was posted on Saturday, November 1st, 2008 at 5:37 am under Opinion.

Read more entries by Leslie Poston.
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