Voter Suppression Wiki

The Voter Suppression Wiki serves as a directory of information on how to protect your own vote, as well as the votes of others, during this election season.  The Voter Suppression Wiki is a repository of voter suppression information created by, in true wiki fashion–YOU.  The wiki publishes action alerts, information on ways you can protect your vote, an incident tracker so you can see what’s going on across the nation, upcoming guides for the media and bloggers, and a planning and strategy section that outlines how anyone can get involved.

Twitter Vote Report is asking you to Twitter your vote and Twitter the votes of others so that data can be collected and analyzed in new and different ways. The project is working with some great partners like Common Cause, Rock the Vote, Video the Vote, and many others.

From the front page:

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. Using either Twitter.com, iPhone, direct SMS, or our telephone hotlines, voters will have a new way to share these experiences with one another and ensure that the media and watchdog groups are aware of any problems.

As news outlets and blogs will report on Election Day stories, we are building an invaluable resource for thousands of voters to get immediate help. From questions like “where do I vote” or “how do I make sure that my rights are being upheld,” Twitter Voter Report augments these efforts by providing a new way for voters to send text messages (aka tweets) via cellphones or computers which will be aggregated and mapped so that everyone can see the Nation’s voting problems in real-time.

Imagine a nationwide web map with pins identifying every zip code where Americans are waiting over 30 minutes to vote or indicating those election districts where the voting machines are not working. Collectively we will inform each other when when the lines too long and ensure that media and watchdog groups know where problems exist.

Four Ways to Use VoteReport

* Twitter: include #votereport and other tags (below) to describe the scene on the ground
* SMS: Send text messages to 66937 starting with the keyword #votereport plus other hash tags (below)
* iPhone: We expect to have an iPhone App in the App Store by election day
* Phone: Call our automated system to report about conditions, using any touch-tone phone

And if you would like to talk to a human to report bad conditions you’ve observed, please call our partner 1-866-OUR-VOTE.

Thanks to the generous support of my readers and an invitation from the sponsors of the Big Tent in Denver, I will be at, or at least very near, the 2008 National Democratic Convention in Denver. I can’t begin to tell you how exciting this news is for a lowly, independent blogger like me. Most of the people at the Big Tent are affiliated with organizations like BlogHer, NOW, Planned Parenthood, etc. I will do my best to represent Reno and Nevada well while I’m there. Look for my updates in the following places:

Blog posts: Reno and Its Discontents
Tweets: My Twitter page

I am still negotiating, but you may also see my blog posts on Women in Media and News and Women’s eNews.