I've been thinking about writing another post full of resources all week. I just hope I don't forget any here.
I saw this video today and found it very moving:
This election is so important. Please encourage all your friends, family, and neighbors to get out and vote.
First on the list today is Election Protection, an organization that's here to help you with any problems you may encounter at the polls on November 4th. You can call them for help on any trouble you have voting at 1-866-OUR-VOTE. You can also tweet what you're experiencing at the polls through your cell phone and have your message immediately appear in their feed at the Twitter Vote Report website (and their twitter feed) by adding the hashtag #votereport to your message. Instructions can be found here on how to participate. You don't even need to sign up for a Twitter account to send a tweet - here are instructions on how to do it without an account. The standard number to dial in the US to send a tweet is 40404, but they have a special section called "How do I submit a report?" on the Twitter Vote Report website. Election Protection has their own tweet feed as well. If you don't use Twitter, you can still view all the messages that come in by bookmarking these sites and checking in periodically, or by subscribing to their rss feeds (if you use an rss reader like Google Reader) using the button on the bottom left of each page.
Then there's Video the Vote, an organization encouraging people to record their voting experience - particularly any problems that arise - and upload them to the web for people everywhere to view. You can subscribe to their feed through YouTube. They also have a twitter feed. You can add the hashtag #vtv to show up in their coverage feed. They are looking for volunteers to video voting problems in their communities, to help get videos uploaded as quickly as possible to the web, to serve as a dispatcher who connects up videographers to voters experiencing a problem, to drive videographers to the places they need to get to, and to blog about the reports as they come in.
There's also, on YouTube, a channel called Video Your Vote, which is partnered with PBS and tons of other organizations. What's cool about this group is that they have a Google Map you can add your video to. One of their playlists currently has 117 videos in it, although you have to dig into their subscription page to find it.
VOTERSTHINKdotORG is another resource on YouTube for news coverage about the election, with lots of clips from different news shows. It's pretty liberal in tone.
Of course, Twitter also has a whole section devoted to tweets about the election, which I've found to be my best source of late-breaking news. You can even follow what people are saying in your area by using the advanced search page and filling in the city you're in and some keywords.
Here's an article on Alternet called "Voting Watch: Twelve States to Follow on Election Day." You may also want to check out their article, "Colorado Sued to Reverse Voter Purges." Here's a video of the long lines voters were experiencing in Colorado Springs on Friday.
Over on Voters Unite, I'm keeping a close eye on their elections problem log, where you will find daily updates about what some voters have been experiencing, including both a summary of the problem, the state it happened in, the date, and links to how it was reported in the news.
From TechDirt is this story: Surprise, Surprise: E-Voting Glitches Found in Early Voting.
From Rolling Stone magazine is Greg Palast's article: Block the Vote - Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?
Here's an interactive Google Map that show which newspapers across the nation have endorsed a particular candidate.
From the Representative Press comes this video commenting on a fraudulent flyer aimed at voting Democrats, as reported by AP News.
This video campaign that you can send to your friends and family to spur them into voting is cracking me up. But I like its message and think it's an important one - every vote makes a difference.
A look at early voting statistics from Dr. Michael McDonald at George Mason University. This is what he had to say about the trends he's seeing in this data about a week ago. You may want to check out Pollster for some graphics on how this is mapping out across the nation.
According to the Pew Report, the Internet is now the 2nd place people turn to for campaign news, after television.
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