OneWorld.net (U.S.)

NEW YORK, Nov 1 (OneWorld) - With record numbers expected to vote in this year's presidential election -- and early voting underway in 30 states -- reports of irregularities and voter confusion in states from Montana to West Virginia are already making headlines.

But a cadre of high-tech voter-protection advocates are testing whether new technologies, ranging from the well-known (blogs, YouTube, and texting) to the not-so-ubiquitous (Twitter, streaming video) can help educate voters, reduce confusion and delays, and make it easier to monitor and respond when problems do arise.

Countering -- and Preventing -- Problems at the Polls

Mobile phones are at the heart of this year's voter protection efforts.Thomas Melvin of Denver, Colorado, waited weeks for his absentee ballot to arrive in the mail. As the Oct. 31 deadline loomed, he contacted the Election Commission, his secretary of state, the governor's office, and the ballot vendor, Sequoia Voting Systems. More often than not, his call was routed to voicemail.

"I went to great efforts to vote...and the lack of concern appalls me," he says.

Then Melvin, 55, discovered an outlet that wasn't available to voters during the last election: he logged on to VoterSuppression.net.

The site -- along with news reports -- confirmed that a "glitch" had left more than 18,000 Denver residents without their ballots. Although he ultimately solved the problem offline, the Web site has made him hopeful that someone was watching, and there may be "some answers provided to voters."

Melvin's situation is just one of numerous irregularities already being documented across the country.

Gerald Herbert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan election law organization, told OneWorld that his organization has documented problems in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, and many other states -- including misinformation about the impact of foreclosure on voting rights in Montana and Michigan. 

A Sep. 26 Associated Press article documented an e-mail campaign misinforming residents of Prince George's County, Maryland, that voters who lost a home to foreclosure were no longer eligible to vote.

"We're seeing more voter suppression and more sophisticated efforts than ever before," says Jon Pincus, a former manager of strategy development at Microsoft and a creator of VoterSuppression.net, a "wiki" -- a site where users login and create the content -- that tracks and monitors incidents across the country.

"Often, when people have problems, they may not need legal help, but assistance from people in their communities who can watch the news or look something up for them."
- Nancy Scola, techPresidentWhether an honest mistake or something more insidious, Pincus says, misinformation can spread quickly, thanks to the power of the Internet. "That's why we're working to protect voters' rights and make sure they're not confused or afraid."

"One thing that characterizes voting policy in the United States is lack of information -- people don't necessarily know their locations, or the rules...and it's different in different localities," says Nancy Scola, an associate editor at the blog techPresident, which looks at the intersection between technology and politics.

Enter the brave new world of online monitoring -- where an ordinary citizen with quick fingers, a cell phone, or Internet access can help promote democracy.

"Tweet the Vote"

During the Republican National Convention, Scola and her colleague Allison Fine saw that advocates and reporters used Twitter -- a social networking and blog site that lets users post short updates ("tweets") online or by cell phone text messaging -- to organize and identify "hot spots" where newsworthy events were happening.

Snapshot of Twitter Vote Reports, Nov. 3. © TwitterVoteReport.comThat gave them an idea: why not use Twitter to let voters ask questions on election day, alert others to long lines or problems, and exchange real-time information and monitoring?

"Often, when people have problems, they may not need legal help, but assistance from people in their communities who can watch the news or look something up for them," Scola says.

The "Twitter Vote Report" site (twittervotereport.com) was launched Oct. 29. Voters' messages are posted and mapped so that users can "see" voting problems around the country in real-time.

Videoing the Vote

And the arsenal of e-tools is growing.

A live-video-streaming Web site called The UpTake is asking citizens to report on "voter intimidation or any other questionable election-related activity" by using their cameraphones to shoot video of the incident. The videos will stream live and then be archived on The UpTake's Web site.

The group is part of the "Video the Vote" Coalition, which will distribute citizens' videos to mainstream media and online.

YouTube and PBS have organized a similar project, "Video Your Vote," which encourages voters to document "the energy and excitement, as well as any problems you see." PBS will include some of the viewer-created videos in its election coverage.

Hotlines Go Online

The Center for Media and Democracy created the Election Protection wiki to let visitors log incidents and access legal information. There are also blogs, Facebook applications, and video channels proliferating as this year's vote approaches.

At an Election Protection command center in November, 2006. © Threat to Democracy (flickr)The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law -- a nonpartisan group that sponsors the Campaign for Fair Elections -- is working in partnership with more than 100 organizations to maintain the hotline 866-OUR-VOTE (888-Ve-Y-Vota in Spanish) and the companion site, www.866ourvote.org.

Since its launch on Sep. 17, the hotline has logged more than 30,000 calls from people around the country with questions and concerns about the process, says Jonah Goldman, director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections. An interactive online map (ourvotelive.org) is tracking the incidents reported through the hotline.

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights hopes to reach more than 2 million viewers with online ads about 866-OUR-VOTE targeting voters in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and Nevada. The ads are streaming online at civilrights.org.

"The way information moves in new Internet-enabled political space is critical," says Lillie Coney, associate director of the Election Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a public interest research center in Washington, DC. "The fact that we're anticipating very long lines means that the more prepared voters are before they arrive at a location, the more smoothly voting will go."

Limited Reach

But can these new technologies reach the people most vulnerable to voter suppression efforts or confusion? 

Even proponents admit that most of these methods have a limited reach -- Twitter doesn't release its membership numbers, but several analyses, including TechCrunch.com, estimate it to be about 1.3 million. The VoterSuppression.net wiki has 150 active members; Jon Pincus says it is not currently tracking visitor statistics.

Many of the people most vulnerable to voter suppression tactics -- minorities, senior citizens, low-income voters -- are the least likely to use Twitter, or to have regular access to the Internet.

"Our strategy is to engage highly networked people in those communities who are online and get them to spread the word through the offline community," says Pincus. "Students can be a crucial bridge here, so that's why we're spending a lot of time with [student organizing] groups like Campus Progress."

The strength of these high-tech efforts may also lie in their ability to bring together existing election protection efforts -- Twitter, Voter Suppression, and others are working closely with each other and the more familiar players like Rock the Vote and the Center for Media and Democracy to cross-promote efforts and share information.

"If there's a critical mass of people in different communities that use this, if it helps a couple of people, or 10,000, or a million people vote, that's a useful outcome," says Nancy Scola.

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