Social Networking Sites being used by Citizen Journalists in US Presidential Election

TwitterVoteReport.com (no longer functional) was a site for sharing your voting experience during 2008 US Presidential elections. Their help page has the details about how to participate in reporting your experience.

On November 4th 2008, millions of Americans will go to over 200,000 distinct voting locations and using different systems and machinery to vote.  Some voters will have a terrific experiences, and others will experience the same problems we have been hearing about for years – long lines, broken machines, inaccurate voting rolls, and others will experience problems that we haven’t heard about before.

That’s why a new citizen-driven election monitoring system called Twitter Vote Report (www.twittervotereport.com) was just launched. Using either Twitter.com, iPhone, direct SMS, or our telephone hotlines, voters will have a new way to share their experiences with one another and ensure that the media and watchdog groups are aware of any problems.

And YOU can help!  Be a citizen journalist!  Submit a report about conditions at your polling place.

Other internet giants too have some very neat tools related to these elections. Google Earth tool for analyzing the results since 1980 is very cool.

In India, the elections are held very efficiently [rigging has drastically been reduced]. In 2004, Indian elections covered an electorate larger than 670 million people and the govt spent $300m on the entire election process. The Electronic Voting Machine is a big success and these days few clubs in Bangalore use them for their internal elections.

The Election Commission of India doesn’t get due recognition by many (journalists, media, elite etc). A very sad situation.

One needs to see what tools popup on the internet and mobile during India’s general elections to be held in 2009.

Also See

• Twitter, Facebook, Google And General Elections 2019 of India