Twitter Vote, Video The Vote, and Voter Supression Wiki keep votes intact with citizen journalism
By Leslie Poston
This election has been consistently innovating how we receive our information about candidates and issues. For the first time in history, we are getting almost instantaneous information about voters rights, candidates, various bills and other issues up for vote, campaign finances, rally locations and more.
This is the most technologically advanced election since the televised debates between Nixon and Kennedy, and it is making just as many changes to how we view our politics, both in the United States and abroad. We are getting instant feedback. For example, the first town to vote each year, known as the Notch in NH (Dixville Notch), has already announced their results – going to a Democrat for the first time since 1968 (Obama, 15 – 9). How else can you keep an eye on the results as they happen?
TwitterVoteReport gives live tweeted voter reports from all over the country. The site gives detailed instructions on how to use various hashtags to report your vote or any problems:
How to participate
It’s simple. We voters are using Twitter and other texting tools to report on how the vote is really going during this election, and we’re urging everyone to use the common word (or “hashtag” in Twitter lingo) of #votereport as they do so. If that happens, we’ll all be able watch on maps and graphs how the election is going across the country.
Including “#votereport” in your tweet is enough to get your report tracked by Twitter Vote Report. But the more details you can stuff in, the better. So, for example, include in your Twitter post:
* #[zip code] to indicate the zip code where you’re voting; ex., “#12345″
* L:[address or city] to drill down to your exact location; ex. “L:1600 Pennsylvania Avenue DC”
* #machine for machine problems; ex., “#machine broken, using prov. ballot”
* #reg for registration troubles; ex., “#reg I wasn’t on the rolls”
* #wait:[minutes] for long lines; ex., “#wait:120 and I’m coming back later”
* #early if you’re voting before November 4th
* #good or #bad to give a quick sense of your overall experience
* #EP[your state] if you have a serious problem and need help from the Election Protection coalition; ex., #EPOH
Voter Suppression Wiki is out there for those who are more of a Wiki fan than a Twitter hound. This is an interactive wiki set up to report and track incidents of voter fraud. To participate, go directly to the wiki site. The site is updated and edited like any standard wiki.
For citizen journalists with cam corders, flip cams and camera phones, you have Video The Vote. This gives you a place to upload footage of your own vote, machine incidents, bullying, and other issues. Please make sure your state allows video voting so that you don’t get fined or arrested, and please follow common decency and do not intimidate other voters or otherwise ruin their experience by being intrusive. Not everyone wants to be filmed, and some find the attention unnerving.
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November 4th, 2008
Volume and quality aren’t interchangeable. You can also say early access and publishing of unsubstantiated information like exit polls in 2000 an hour before the precincts closed in the Florida panhandler caused lasting damage to the Country.
What has happened is we have the ability to have the reporting of unsubstantiated facts instantly bypassing the scrutiny and fact checking you used to be able to take for granted. Having journalism shaping and influencing the course of the story, as many feel has happened in this election, and letting rumors spread to millions in a short period of time is new, but hardly innovative.
I’ll have to call the local media and ask how many of their journalists are citizens.