Here’s a nice example of applied technology and (fairly) straightforward how-to.
Twitter Vote Report is a vehicle for live updates (or up-to-the-minute tracking) of voting experience across the country. You can report via Twitter (using the #votereport hashtag), by text (start with #votereport, text to 66937 [MOZES]), by phone (567-258-VOTE (8683) or 208-272-902). More details at the site.
Also from the site, I got the code to modify for a state-level report:
Folks who haven’t used Twitter can start today, using the how to help page. I’d never used hashtags before — keywords with # in front of them — but Twitter’s eager to have folks do so:
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”
- #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
Since I work from home, I’m able to pick my time to vote… and with this nudge, I’ll report via Twitter when I do.
An afterthought: last election, there were about 1875 voters registered in my precinct — I wonder how many of them are on Twitter?
Afternoon update: We walked to the precinct. I checked the time as we entered the community center: 1:13 pm. I didn’t recognize a single election judge, so the whole crew may have turned over since I was a chief judge in this precinct in 2006. I stopped to chat with one of the chief judges on the way out; even with that, eight minutes, from entry to exit. We were back home at 1:31.
The check-in judge did tell me that they’d been busy up to about 30 minutes earlier.
Another election twitter app is Tropicana’s Freshly Squeezed Election Tweets, a visualization:
http://anorangeamerica.com/
It aggregates tweets real-time and creates a “bubble” proportional to each term’s volume (analogous to a word cloud). It then draws connections between terms mentioned together. It’s addicting to play around with and watch it update! I’ve been working on the site with Tropicana, and we just launched it this morning.
Thanks for the nudge, Winston — it’s an oddly fascinating thing. The strongest link with “Bush” just now was “folks” (if I’m reading this right).
I guess Tropicana is doing this because it’d be hard to give everyone a free glass of juice?