Vote for Change

Recently I've mentioned a number of vote protection projects in passing. As we get closer to election day, and continue to hear about misleading information, long wait lines at polls, and other instances of voter suppression/discouragement, I wanted to give one of them a bigger shout-out.

Today, the Twitter Vote Report website officially launched. This is a really interesting project that is attempting to use technology and crowdsourcing to highlight and resolve common election-day problems. Here's the description from their presser:

A volunteer network of software developers, designers, and other collaborators have teamed up with the award-winning blog techPresident to launch Twitter Vote Report. Individual voters will use their cell phones to report on their individual experiences – the good, bad and ugly. How long is the wait in Cleveland, Ohio? Are the new optical scan machines staying up and running in Palm Beach County,Florida? Is failure to bring ID to the polls thwarting first-time voters in Indianapolis? With Twitter Vote Report, we’ll know the answers to those questions straight from voters from all over the country.

If you are familiar with Twitter, here are step by step instructions on how to report problems at your polling place (If you are a novice, here's a primer):

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 where you’re voting; ex., “#12345″
• #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

That last part is significant. If someone is erroneously telling you that you are not allowed to vote, or is preventing others from voting, there is no guarantee that just sending a Tweet solve that problem. Texting the election protection coalition, or calling their toll free number (866-OUR-VOTE) is still a necessary step.

What will happen when you Tweet (theoretically), is that local journalists and activists will become aware of the situation on the ground. That can create grassroots and media pressure to correct the situation, or in a worst case scenario, influence the post-election story and help institute reforms before future elections.

#votereport reports will, in real-time, be made available to anyone who wants them. Visit TwitterVoteReport.com to see the reports flow in. Voters can read these messages and help one another solve problems, liking letting someone know when a polling place has been moved. Advocacy groups can use them to spot problems. Citizens can figure out how to lend fellow voters a hand. And the press can zero in on local voting stories worth telling. Just sending in short reports can help your fellow citizens to vote.

Right now, the Election Protection Coalition, Rock the Vote, Credo Mobile, and Common Cause are working with Twitter Vote Report, but any organization, blogger, or reporter can follow the feeds to find out what is happening in their area. This should be interesting project to follow on E-Day.

(Ed. Note: This piece was first published on MyDD in July of 2005.)

How to use culture to inform, involve, and activate "young" voters (Vote for Change v. Music for America)

In Part I of this essay, I outlined what I believe to be a fundamental flaw in efforts by democratic groups to reach young voters - namely that they are blinded by the beltway and come on too strong with the politics out of the gate to interest more than a tiny fraction of their peers. What they should be doing is integrating their programs more fully into the lives of the people they are trying to reach. The Right already does this with churches (as everyone around here no doubt is tired of hearing), and if we want to reach young voters, we need to employ our own secret weapon - culture.

We need to do with concert venues and comedy clubs, bars and coffee shops what the Right does with churches.

That was the simple idea behind Music for America (as well as that of groups like Drinking Liberally, Punk Voter, Head Count, Concerts for Kerry/Change). We took politics, which was a topic of taboo in youth culture - an automatic badge of unhipness - and, by integrating it into the cultural fabric, changed the entire frame through which our generation perceived it. For the kids we reached, politics wasn't a freakish entity floating at the margin of their lives anymore. It was about going to good shows and hanging out with their friends, seeing a good band or having a beer. And somewhere in all that socializing and normalcy, they register to vote and get a little bit more informed. After more than 2400 shows across the county, politics became part of a typical Saturday night out.

Groups like YDA, College Dems, and Clickback America all need to embrace their less political peers, and realize that it is OK that some people don't want to participate in highly political activities. The active left needs to recognize that it's OK - no, its valuable - to have a large pool of voters who are mildly informed and involved through their everyday activities, even if they never participate in any of our "boots on the ground" activities.