Voting

A new study by social psychologist Christopher Bryan and his colleagues at Stanford University shows how changing a single word - from "Vote" to "Voter" can increase voter turnout by as much as 10%.  It's a fascinating study. This article suggests that it has to do with manipulating people using their vanity.  However, I contend that it's a matter of making politics personal.  Marshall Ganz talks about the importance of narrative and the use of personal stories in organizing.

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One of the reasons I'm excited to vote this week is the introduction of Ranked Choice Voting in my hometown of Oakland, California. I like Ranked Choice Voting because it allows voters to express their preferences in a more complete way than if they could only vote for one candidate. And when you can only vote for one candidate, then you might be reasonably worried about the dreaded spoiler effect.

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It goes without saying that we at CivicActions have been watching the presidential race with a passion that borders on addiction. We have also been excited by recent developments and new uses of technology in the service of civic engagement (which was, in part, what our company was founded on 4 years ago).

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From Al Giordano (via BB):

Texas Republicans have worked overtime to make it harder for key Democratic voting groups to vote and be represented fairly. The redistricting games they’ve played are infamous. And for the Prairie View A&M University precincts, they put the early-polling place more than seven miles from the school. So what did the students in this video do? They shut down the highway as they marched seven miles to cast their votes on the first day of early voting.

The scene reminds me of another famous motorway Reclaim the Streets party from 'back in the day' (1996 to be precise)...

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Zephyr Teachout has a great op-ed in the Washington Post today about the future of campaigning. She talks about some interesting ideas like mobile political affinity software, political accountability software and political placement as ways of reaching voters in '08. Thanks to the Berkman Center newsletter for pointing this one out.

Just saw this article on Personal Democracy Forum: American Idol Cell Phone Voting Comes To Political Debates. From the article: Many of you may have already heard that Pat Lamarche (Green Independent Gubernatorial Candidate in Maine) has launched a major cell phone campaign around the issue of getting out the vote... At last night's debate at the University of Maine, Pat asked the audience in her closing statement to use their cell phones to vote for who they think won the debate. "Using your mobile phone" she stated, "text 'pat' to 30644." Those that did received a text message ballot back asking them to reply with the corresponding number of the candidate they thought won the debate. This is the first time an instantaneous poll has been taken using "American Idol" style voting techniques in a political campaign.

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Evolve Strategies has developed a Web-based “widget� to collect and report election incidents that may require voter protection intervention. VoterStory.org is an open-source utility that can be placed on any website to feed data into a central database, which in turn alerts voter protection groups each time a new incident is reported in their district.

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Today MAPLight.org unveiled a pioneering database that lays bare the connection between money and votes in California politics. http://www.maplight.org The MAPLight.org website combines information from the Official California Legislative Information website, which contains the official text of each bill and how each legislator voted, and the Institute on Money in State Politics, a national nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to accurate, comprehensive and unbiased documentation and research on campaign finance. MAPLight.org allows journalists and citizens to answer questions such as:

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Politicians are discovering the new political maxim in the Web 2.0 age: "The next stupid thing you say may be on YouTube." This great NYTimes article examines the new political landscape in which millions of grassroots cameras and instant video publishing are shining new light into the banal and risk-averse world of modern politics.

Some political analysts say that YouTube could force candidates to stop being so artificial, since they know their true personalities will come out anyway. “It will favor a kind of authenticity and directness and honesty that is frankly going to be good,� said Carter Eskew, a media consultant who worked for Senator Lieberman’s primary campaign. “People will say what they really think rather than what they think people want to hear.�

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Sunlight Foundation has released Popup Politicians "an AJAX-based widget that adds mini-profiles with links of Members of Congress to your page that appear when you mouseover the link."