It is the 4th of November, 2008. Today, we are privileged to be able to witness and experience one of the most anticipated elections in the history of all democracies. As Americans head to the polls to elect their representatives to government, as well as vote on legislative issues, we are all anxiously awaiting the results.
The Smart-guide to the U.S. Election is a small collection of resources to help you keep abreast of late-breaking and live election coverage. The resources highlighted here do not necessarily reflect a particular political slant (nor the views of Smartmobs), but rather are a collection of social-media sources to help you cover the 2008 U.S. Election.
TRACKING THE ELECTION LIVE:
current - Diggs the Election: “Your Election Night Party with Digg, Twitter, and Diplo.”
Our Vote Live - Tracking the voter assistance work.
Our Vote Live is a custom site developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (”EFF”) that facilitates the documentation, sorting, and organization of election-related problems and inquiries reported by ordinary voters to the Election Protection Coalition via the toll free voter-assistance hotline 866-OUR-VOTE.
Twitter Vote Report - #votereport tracking the Election live in through the Twittersphere.
Electoral Scoreboard - Daily Kos created an electoral map to track the election results as they pour in.
Propublica’s VoteWatch - “VoteWatch culls breaking news on voting issues from around the Web, focusing in particular on states where problems (ranging from voter registration to machine malfunction to alleged fraud or suppression) are anticipated.”
CITIZEN JOURNALISM:
The UPTAKE is covering the election today by aggregating social media sources and placing an emphasis of citizen-journalists reporting the election. This Uptake is probably the most comprehensive grass-roots coverage of the U.S. election.
(Please read Howard’s previous post regarding the Uptake to see how you can participate in covering the election too!)
Video the Vote - “is a national network of citizen journalists, independent filmmakers, and media professionals working together to document voter suppression and disenfranchisement.”
VIDEO COVERAGE / LIVE STREAMING:
Qik is hosting LIVE election day coverage streaming from it’s member’s mobile phones.
Vimeo Exit Poll - is collecting videos of voters sharing their election day experiences.
The Uptake “Vote Chasers” LIVE video stream
CNN Live Video Stream of the election.
REAL-TIME MICROBLOGGING:
Election.Twitter - Updates regarding the U.S. election from Twitter users.
Twemes - Aggregated social media/content (Flickr, Del.ico.us, Twitter) focused on the following topics: #votereport , #election08 , #twitvote (Twitter Election Poll).
Seesmic - Election Perspectives - Join the Election day conversation.
Comments
@ 14:42
Also consider this site, which pulls election-related Tweets in real time, has “bubble charts” to demonstrate connections between conversations, and crunches data on who is saying what, updating every 30 seconds:
http://anorangeamerica.com/
We rolled this out at New Media Strategies this morning as the polls opened. It’s from Tropicana and it’s called Fresh Squeezed Election Tweets.
@ 14:34
Also check out this new Twitter tracker called Fresh Squeezed Tweets- http://anorangeamerica.com/
We rolled this out for Tropicana just as the polls opened on election morning at New Media Strategies.
It pulls Tweets in real time, crunches the numbers and displays the connections between conversations with some pretty cool graphics. Election may be over, but its got some fascinating stuff there to look at, especially now. Give it a look…