Daily Digest: Capturing, Tagging, and Protecting the Vote

The Web on the Candidates

• Documenting American Democracy: PBS is teaming up with YouTube to put together Video Your Vote, a project that asks voters to document and share their Election Day experiences. (I'd imagine, though, that your early-voting trips to the ballot box are welcomed as well -- or, if you live in Oregon, when you, you know, lick the envelope and put your vote in the mail box.) While lugging a video camera into P.S. 123 to document your ballot casting might create a bit of a chilling effect amongst your fellow voters, thankfully video cameras are superduper tiny these days. The Video Your Vote team is recommending that you pick up one of those minuscule Flip cameras, which start about about $125. (YouTube and PBS also working with Pure Digital Technologies' Flip Spotlight Program to distribute 1,000 cameras to non-profit groups and local PBS stations.) #

• Did the Schlep Fizzle?: Comedian Sarah Silverman made a splash recently with her rather dirty call for Jewish kids to haul themselves down to Florida over Columbus Day weekend and sell their grandparents on "the goodest person we've ever had as a presidential choice," known to the rest of us as Barack Obama. But did the Great Schlep amount to bupkes? Depends on who you ask, and what you think the point was. The New York Times suggests it was a bust, but South Florida's Sun Sentinel reports that organizers were thrilled with the Columbus Day weekend turnout. But maybe the goal wasn't to get grandkids down to the Sunshine state to win bubbe's heart for Obama after all. The Times quotes an Indiana lawyer and Facebook friend of the Schlep on why it mattered: "It's a humorous and self-deprecatory way for younger and more progressive Jews to signal to African-Americans that they’re ashamed of the outrageous rumors and slanders being circulated and swallowed in some Jewish circles." #

• Match.com for Candidates: Call me old-fashioned, but I think that both potential spouses and presidents should be judged on whether or not they've got great hair. But the folks at Signal Patterns have other ideas. Eh, to each her own, I guess. The cutting-edge social science shop has launched a Facebook widget that assesses your personality and lets you know whether, deep-down, you're a McCain or Obama (or third-party) voter. After your assessment, they'll let you know who "scrupulous" voters prefer and who gets the "aesthetic" vote. Who knows? Maybe it's time to get a divorce from your political party, and you don't even know it yet. #

• The Twitterverse Plans the Next Admin's Launch: What should the next President of the United States do in the first 100 days of his administration? That's what eBay's Pierre Omidyar wants to know. He's asking for ideas, 135-characters or less, posted on Twitter with the hashtag #100d. Pierre made the call just last night, and it has already produced a considerable response. Of course, the opportunity for snark must never be allowed to pass; check out this response from @gogglesandglass: "Obama should focus on fixing ebay..." #

The Candidates on the Web

• Making a Tax Cut Case Online: The candidates' competing tax plans have factored prominently into John McCain's stump speeches of late, and the Obama campaign has taken to the web to make a numbers-based case for its tax vision. The Obama-Biden Tax Calculator is a dead simple microsite that calculates what the impact of Obamanomics and McCainomics will be on your pocketbook, based on your own personal financial profile. (An "unofficial" Obama tax calculator has been floating around the web for a while now.) The site is introduced by a straightforward 50-second video that attempts to tie McCain to George Bush's tax record, set somewhat disconnectedly against soothing chamber music. A detailed FAQ tries to short circuit the argument that a calculator this simple is, well, just too simple for a complex policy question on which some people might be basing their vote. #

• Campaigns Turn Focus to Election Protection: The Obama campaign is taking steps to combat misleading emails floating around from seemingly earnest supporter that spread untruths about voting, reports Wired's Sarah Lai Stirland. For example, "Dave," the voter protection chief from Obama's Florida campaign, stars in new video that aims to clear up Election Day rumors on what campaign paraphernalia can be worn to the polls and whether your ID must match your address on file. Those activities seem to fall under the Obama campaign's Counsel for Change/Voter Protection Program, but the effort seems a bit scattershot 19 days out. For its part, the McCain campaign's Ensure Honest Elections program has an online registration form for recruiting lawyers, law students, and other volunteers with legal know-how to "serv[e] as election monitors, helping in election response centers, and as members of legal response teams." #

In Case You Missed It...

You might have read that some news sites are using Google Trends to drive their editorial decisions, and now Fred Stuzman has a report on another clever use of search engine smarts: identifying which anti-Obama "smears" are spiraling around the web and then assigning volunteer teams to combat them on whatever blog, forum, or website they appear. Fred makes a good point, though: the effort "will need to proceed judiciously to avoid claims of astroturfing."

Nancy Scola goes inside one of the most thrilling things happening in elections today: the Voting Information Project's plan to make the who, what, where, and hows of American elections ubiquitous in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

And Micah Sifry (and a few shall-remain-nameless friends) has mashed up an Obama campaign data feed and Google Earth to produce a remarkable visualization of the thousands of campaign events happening across the United States between now and November 4th. Micah's asking the McCain camp for a comparable data set so that he might build them a similarly pretty picture.