It simply boggles my mind that neither the Republican or Democratic Party websites link to their respective convention websites from their homepages. Nor do they even mention the conventions--no dates, no locations, no nothing!

Not only is turnout at record levels in primaries across the country, but the role the internet is playing in the election is setting records that bury previous high marks. According to the Pew Internet & American Life report issued today, a full "46% of Americans have used the internet to get political news and share their thoughts about the campaign. Online video and social networking sites have taken off, especially among Obama supporters." So let’s stop asking whether the internet will ever elect a president and accept the fact that no candidate can afford to downplay the importance of it.

There seems to be no limit to the power of the people to use the internet to express themselves politically, artistically, ... you name it. Continuing in my emerging pattern of video show-n-tell, check out Hillary's Downfall. You can watch the video and vote on whether you find it offensive on this Democratic Underground post. I thought it was offensive, but I was laughing too hard to cast my vote.

(NOTE: I had reservations linking directly to this video, so I have posted to an item that allows people to vote on whether it is offensive, as an extra filter. As I indicated in my opening sentence, this video shows that there is no limit to how citizens can use the internet to make political statements.)

Without further ado, I want to share with you the satire of the satire... It's Raining McCain - Slayer Style!

In the immortal words of Stan Lee, "'nuff said."

Think MTV's Street Team '08 once again puts MTV News at the leading edge of election news coverage. I have long been a fan of MTV News and its coverage of electoral politics. Back in the early '90's, while I was researching presidential use of television to manipulate public opinion for my dissertation, I was an avid viewer of MTV News. Kurt Loder and Tabitha Soren were doing some really edgy stuff, from gathering college students into a Boston University auditorium to measure their real-time reactions to the presidential debates, to Tabitha Soren interviewing George H.W. Bush on the back platform of a moving train the Sunday before election day (who could forget Poppy referring to "MTV afficionados," showing how completely disconnected he was from young voters?), MTV offered a new breed of television news.

And that tradition continues on today, as MTV News migrates most of its news programming online, including the beta site Think MTV. Think MTV's foray into election news coverage is an ambitious project called Street Team '08. MTV has recruited and hired 51 amateur journalists to blog about the election. 51, as in one for every state plus one for DC. Supervising Producer of Street Team '08 Michael Scogin talks more about the project here:

Now you see it, now you don't.

I tried to show my Internet Advocacy Communication class the new McCain Girls video this evening. We have been following their adventures as we study YouTube's impact on the election, and POOF!, it was gone.

I just watched the new McCain girls video, "Here Comes McCain Again" and I am totally creeped out. Aside from the fact that they have butchered one of my favorite songs, the goth motif is really spooky. And the scene with McCain looking in through the window... call the cops! We got a peeping John.

Weighing in at not quite 2 tons of fun, the McCain Girls are tearing up the YouTube charts and shattering a whole lot of eardrums. Are they hip? Do they make John McCain hip? The jury is still out on that.

And while the McCain Girls have racked up more than a half million views in just one week, they are still a good bit shy of the total number times people have watched John McCain sing that old Beach Boy's ditty. Combining the various clips and mash-ups of the ol' hipster singing "Bomb Iran," McCain has been viewed at least 5 million times. More than 1.1 million of those views were of his unedited clip. For my money, though, I prefer Mike Gravel's remake of John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" to McCain's surf band homage:

Pennsylvania Voter Services just fixed a serious security breach in their online voter registration process. As recently as 5:00 pm this afternoon, anyone downloading a blank voter registration card was provided a URL that included an ID number at the end which could be edited to access thousands of filled out voter registration cards. The PA authorities were alerted to this problem, and within about 30 minutes, the problem was fixed. URLs that previously accessed filled out (but not signed) .pdf's of voter registration cards (see redacted image) now return an "invalid request" message.

For those of you attending (or thinking of attending) the upcoming Politics Online Conference, consider attending a panel I have assembled: Social Networking/Media Strategy of the Presidential Campaigns. While it may be too soon to say that this aspect of online campaigns is the "be all, end all" of online strategy, there have been some great innovations in this space this campaign cycle.