The family decided not to get up at the crack of dawn to stand be in line when the polls open at 6a in Indiana. We’ll rise on our usual schedule and head to Meadowwood sometime around when school would be in session, if public school weren’t canceled for this important day.
Vote Report is recording voter experiences in Indiana today
Developers at Vote Report worked hard this past week to engineer a few widgets to help people track voting experiences across the country, as reported through Twitter, SMS and phone calls into the main office. Bloomington reportedly had some 30,000 early voters who have already endured their couple hours of waiting in line. For the others like me who still prefer to open Christmas presents on Christmas Day, there are several ways you can tweet your experience and feed into this real-time oversight project:
- #[zip code]—indicate the zip code where you’re voting (#47408)
- L:[address or city]—drill down to your exact location (L:2455 Tamarack Trail Bloomington IN)
- #machine—machine problems (#machine broken, using prov. ballot)
- #reg—registration troubles; (#reg Not on the rolls)
- #wait:[minutes]—long lines; (#wait:120 and kids going bonkers)
- #good or #bad—give a quick sense of your overall experience
If you experience a serious problem, request help from the Election Protection coalition with #EP[your state] (as in, #EPIN).
For non-Twitterers, send a text message to 66937 and include “#votereport” at the start of your message. Both iPhone and Google Android phones have applications for this project. Or, simply call 567-258-8683 (VOTE), 208-272-9024, or 617-960-8900 to register your experience.
The evening is going to be filled with Comedy Central, Twitter and CNN keeping us informed on the latest election updates. We’re not even going to try to get the boys in bed, although my expectation is that neither will be conscious by the time the next President is announced. Lost in all of the Obama-McCain rhetoric is the fact that we also have local and state elections of some importance. For those races, the most instantaneous news is expected to come from a new Twitter account—wfiuelection08—fed from WFIU and WTIU. Perhaps Monroe County Council candidate Geoff McKim will tweet a bit.
While Twitter is anticipating their Biggest.Day.Ever in terms of traffic, it is the moment that a new President is declared a winner by a major new channel that we will really know if the company’s server issues are behind them. Steve Jobs talking about new Apple products and even the Super Bowl excitement likely didn’t fall on the radar of all 3.4 million account holders using the service (not that there were that many users during any of the past spikes). A new U.S. President has universal appeal, and the entire world will be watching and waiting for that single moment when the news arrives. Even for less active users, reacting to the ultimate success or failure of the Obama campaign is going to be a tweetable update.
Big day, America. Stay away, Fail Whale.