Elections

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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Obama takes the lead with another emerging technology: temporarily embedding advertising inside video games. The technology is only 18 months old, and Obama is the first presidential candidate to buy space for the Xbox Live system. "The ads — appearing on billboards and other signage — remind players that early voting has begun and plug a campaign Web site that encourages people to register for early voting." The video game ads are targeting 10 battleground states that allow early voting, including Ohio, North Carolina, Nevada and Florida among others.

Sarah Palin didn't care about Country First when she was running for governor extolling the praise of a certain corrupt Alaskan senator in bringing the country's common wealth to Alaska to be poured into the pockets of her chummy local contractors.

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If there's a theme for this election, it's "Change". I actually don't think change is going to come. It's already here. It's a foregone conclusion that the White House will be "Differently Occupied" in January (how's that for PC?). Change has already happened and history has already been made. Welcome to the 21st century. Now let's get to the discussion about addressing the issues of our day.

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The LCV is raising money to run two advertisements for the presidential race. The ads don't favor any particular candidate, rather aim to raise possibly the most important issue facing American's today: How will we change our country's policies to preserve the habitability of our planet for future generations.

TechPresident features a few posts from Micah Sifry on the recent Obama MySpace snafu. The short of it is this: volunteer makes a Barak Obama MySpace profile in 2004. Over time that profile grows to 160k friends. The volunteer gives freely of his time doing it (by his account 5 to 10 hours a day since the beginning of the year). The Obama campaign decides they want control, ask the volunteer how much he'd like to be compensated.

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On saturday I attended RootsCampNYC, and unconference dedicated to debriefing on the elections with a decidedly technological flavor. I shot some video with a Samsung SC-210 digital video camera (that I am returning tomorrow because it doesn't play well with Mac despite what the box says.) The video above is a short interview with Sanford Dickert. I've got a few more videos up on YouTube.

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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.