The Pros Will be Out in Force. Here's Nine Ways Citizen Journalists Can Cover the Election Tomorrow
Here are nine ways that distributive networks are working to cover Election Day.
1. At Betsy Devine’s blog you can learn more about “snapping the leaflets,” a project to document what propaganda voters are subject to days before the election.
“On the last Sunday before Election Day, Republican operatives go out in force with a last-minute message to stick under windshield wipers. And mainstream media is too slow, too divided, to report on what people are being told.
But those “secret messages” won’t be secret if you and I take the time to make them public.”
Hey, don’t Democratic operatives ever stick flyers under windshield wipers? One assumes they’ll be made public too.
2. Video The Vote is an organized effort, using camera phones and video, to cover any mishaps voters encounter this Tuesday.
“In 2000 and 2004, problems plagued the polls in different parts of the country: long lines, eligible voters turned away, voter intimidation, misallocation and malfunctioning of voting equipment.
Starting this election, citizen journalists—people like you and me—will document problems as they occur.”
3. VoterStory.org has a blog widget that will instantly transmit questionable incidents at the polls to voter protection organizations that will be standing by to intervene and give advice. (Note: Tom Evslin has some suspicions about Voter Story’s legitimacy. I will post any new information recieved).
4. Congresspedia has a collective effort to profile the challenging candidates who have a decent shot at winning a seat in the 110th Congress. This will compliment their running profile of current congressmen.
5.Veek the Vote lets Americans collect and share their voting experience through photo or video. Upload your content and a minute later it will appear at Veek The Vote where it can be re-blogged anywhere on the web.
6. The The Polling Place Photo Project is a nationwide experiment in citizen journalism to capture, post and share photographs of democracy in action by documenting the local voting experience. NewAssignment.Net consulted on the project.
7. Rock the Vote has launched a user-generated Get Out The Vote video campaign. Rather than drawing on celebrities to tell people why to vote, this campaign relies on us to get the message out ourselves. A smart way to leverage the idea that voting is the ultimate in “user-generated content.”
8. Predict the winners of elections through sites like Midterm Madness and Predict06, where the crowd can try to determine who will win tomorrow’s election and why.
9. Along with independent live blogging networks news organizations like the BBC, CNN and others are relying on citizen journalists to get full coverage of this years election. They can’t be everywhere, but we already are.
