(Crossposted with permission from The National Political Do Not Contact Registry blog -- Nancy)

With the media's attention focused on recent McCain campaign robo calls, it is as good a time as ever to use Twitter to track these insidious form of Democracy that both sides employ during campaigns.  

In the two weeks since we first proposed using Twitter to report election day problems and challenges, both the response to the idea and how it has evolved has been, frankly, remarkable. The established groups who work in election protection have been amazingly receptive to the adoption of an open format for vote reporting, eager to benefit from a combined effort. And a collection of excellent developers and activists are at work building out the protocol and tools for making the most of the resulting data. While work on the project is pretty fluid, we're going to give you an update on where things stand today.

The Twitter Vote Report project, a evolving partnership with a number of remarkable organizations in collaboration with a amazingly talented network of volunteer developers, hit another milestone this week with a press release from the Election Protection Coalition announcing the effort:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 24, 2008

Use Twitter to Protect the Vote
Election Protection, techPresident, Rock the Vote, and Others Announce New Voter Protection Resource

Read on for the full text of the release.

We noted a while back the curious case of an anti-Sarah Palin email sent by two New York women to 40-odd friends that attracted a reported 150,000 responses. That humble missive has evolved into a multimedia campaign.; In these final days, the presidential campaigns are scrambling to reach out to undecideds or soft supporters and convert them into votes; Now that Obama has won -- the WebMarketing Association's Web Award for the better of the two candidates' websites, of course -- thoughts are turning to how a President Obama would use his much-vaunted Internet savvy to actually govern; and a good deal more.

"At this point," writes Colin Delany on techPresident, "the Internet is pretty much done." Our work here is finished! Actually, Colin's talking about the idea that new media campaign staffers' heavy lifting is behind them. But let's play dumb and indeed jump ahead a week to start thinking transition; Will the Huffington Post and its ilk be old news by next Wednesday? That's the question being asked by Advertising Age's Nat Ives. There's evidence indicating that the answer leans "yep;" Forget robocalls, says Salon's Farhad Manjoo. Their efficacy is more rooted in myth than fact. Text messaging is where it's at, argues Farhad, and it's also where Obama and his robust mobile campaign has a huge lead over McCain and his non-existent one.

We're entirely pleased to announce that Twitter Vote Report is now off the ground and unleashed upon the Internet, with the launch of an actual site at TwitterVoteReport.com.

Now, that "beta" badge is there for a reason. There are, by all means, plenty of kinks to work out in the next few days. But much has been accomplished and in just a few weeks. The site's up, for one thing. The integrated feed of Twitter tweets and SMS messages seems to be flowing, for another. Perhaps most importantly, real live people are actually using the #votereport hashtag to mark their voting experiences on Twitter.

If our referral logs and those of our friends are any indication, where to go to cast a ballot is at the top of many peoples' minds these days. A neat new mobile tool from CREDO Mobile, the New Organizing Institute, and Mobile Commons makes it trivial for voters to find their polling place, wherever they might happen to be; MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe is offering some considered musings on whether Barack Obama's social-networking efforts will actually turn millennials out to vote. It's an open question, and will be for a few more days; A life-long Southern California Republican is backing Barack Obama, and he's rounded up some professional filmmakers to make the case for his candidate; and a good deal more.

(Crossposted on the Twitter Vote Report blog, which you should most definitely be reading.)

Back during the presidential debates, Current TV tried something new. Running just below John McCain, Barack Obama, and the various moderators was a constantly update feed of tweets — or Twitter postings — commenting on the debate. Not every tweet marked #current was included. But any tweet so marked stood a decent shot of making it on air. Here’s a taste of what that project, called "Hack the Debate," looked like.

Current is again innovating how modern news works, and it again involves Twitter. Starting tomorrow at nine in the morning, tweets marked #votereport will broadcast during Current’s special election coverage.

We'll have to view the game tape to see who, in the end, actually turned out to vote this election. But as of noon ET today, more than 2 million people in the coveted Facebook demographic say they've cast a ballot already; In what is, sadly, the final side-by-side comparison of the two presidential candidate's emails, McCain might be able to claim victory over Obama; An article on the Columbia Journalism Review's site makes some controversial assertions about the McCain campaign's online outreach. The premise is that while the Obama campaign has tried to engage the progressive blogosphere on its own terms, Camp McCain "takes a top-down approach;" and a great deal more.

We've run into a couple of examples tonight of local press using Twitter Vote Report to highlight how this election is progressing on the ground in their areas. That's tremendously exciting, as we've always thought that this project makes the most sense in the local context. First up, New York Observer's Gillian Reagan is using Twitter Vote Report to check in on the tweets, voice calls, and mobile app reports coming out of New York. She expresses her mock surprise that the Empire State is showing some of the highest wait times.