Twitter Vote Report Offers Real-Time Democracy on Election Day

FC Expert Blog

BY FC Expert Blogger Allyson KapinMon Nov 3, 2008 at 2:23 PM

This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone.

Voters across the U.S. will have a nifty tool at their disposal on Election Day to report their voting experiences through TwitterVoteReport.com, a new monitoring platform co-developed by the blog techPresident and an all volunteer crew of technology and social media experts. How long is the wait in Richmond, VA? Were you turned away at the polls for some absurd reason? Or perhaps you had a really positive voting experience that you want to share with the world. Just login to Twitter and use the code, or hashtag, #votereport on Election Day to add your personal report.

Voters can also:

Send text messages to 66937 (MOZES) starting with the keyword #votereport
Call their automated system at 567-258-VOTE to report about conditions, using any touch-tone phone.
Download the Iphone app.

According to Allison Fine, one of the pioneers behind TwitterVoteReport.com, early voters have already started using the system to report problems such as “I “Only waited 20 mins and I was out in 10) and their concerns (absentee ballots in #48823 require extra postage. Don’t let a $0.15 slipup keep your voice from being heard!”

Advocacy groups and major media ranging from Common Cause to Rock the Vote and the BBC will be using TwitterVoteReport.com feeds to report on voters’ experiences.

TwitterVoteReport.com was implemented in just three weeks, after Fine from the Personal Democracy Forum and Nancy Scola, Associate Editor of techPresident received an incredible response to a techPresident blog post that encouraged voters to use open hashtags on twitter. “We wanted to see a critical mass of messages be generated that could then be mapped and plotted and visualized in creative ways,” said Fine. In a matter of days programmers and technologists jumped on board and started the wiki http://wiki.votereport.us/ to plan and document the project.

Andrew Rasiej, founder of techPresident, said TwitterVoteReport “is an ideal example of the combined power of social media and impassioned citizens to participate in our democracy. Power and control is shifting from politicians and campaigns to people and we'll be able to see that in real-time on Election Day."

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Allyson Kapin is the Founding Partner of Rad Campaign and Founder of Women Who Tech.