election
Transparency, Stupid!
Flickr Photo: Duane StoreyJames Carville helped keep the Clinton campaign on message in 1992 by hanging a sign on Bill Clinton's door that read, in part, "The economy, stupid." That now-famous catchphrase is widely credited with giving the Clinton campaign its win. Although we don't know if it was ever taped up on any doors, I think the winning strategy for the Obama campaign was "Transparency, stupid!"
In this election, Obama rode a tidal wave of youth vote to the presidency, with 66% of voters under 30 casting their ballot for the Democrat. What the campaign realized, early and often, is that the under-thirty crowd communicates differently from the rest of us. As Allison Fine writes in Momentum, this group is "... likely to engage in two-way conversation with staff, volunteers, and clients, rather than in one-way broadcasts, the style of communication most often used by organizations now."
This meant two things for the campaign.
Tweet the Vote
Believe it or not, we're less than 24 hours away from finding out who the next administration will be. Finally.
While the campaigns are busy getting their last arguments in, on the ground, we're preparing for an anticipated record turnout. Record turnout sounds like a good thing for democracy, but it could come with record problems.
Justice Brandeis said that sunshine is the best disinfectant. Now, you can shine your rays on the voting process, highlighting any issues you encounter at the polls: Allison Fine and Nancy Scola have developed TwitterVoteReport, a site that collects "tweets" from Twitter users with news from their polling places.
