Twitter Proves Its Worth: Voter Problems Addressed With 'Votereport'

Eric Krangel | November 4, 2008 8:15 PM

obama-mccain.jpgThe hottest trend on Twitter today was tagging your tweets "#votereport." The idea (full description here) was to provide a real-time commentary on voting conditions and report any problems to the nonpartisan Election Protection coalition. But was anyone listening to Twitter's problems? Turns out they were.

We got in touch with the Election Protection team and asked them what they saw on Twitter today:

  • On Twitter, as with voting problems that were phoned in to the group's toll-free hotline, only a small percentage of problem reports got followed up on.
  • While the number of phone calls was "exponentially higher" (over 50,000 calls) than the Twitter reports, a much higher percentage of Twitter problems were investigated.
  • Twitter generated about 20 investigations, while phone calls generated 70 follow-ups.

Here's one: @wellstoneaction tweeted at around 12:30 EST:

Hearing of problem accessing MPLS polling location in ward 12 pct 7 (Vets Home) due to road closures & lack of signage. #EPMN #mnvotes

An Election Protection team member in Minnesota got in touch with the tweeter, and minutes later @wellstone action updated:

wow, great work Election Protection folks. I got a call in minutes in response to my tweet reporting a problem. #EPMN #mnvotes

We're not sure just what the Election Protection did (open the roads?), and the national spokesman we talked to couldn't tell us how the Minnesota team member resolved the problem. But the case demonstrates that the concept works.

Not that it always worked perfectly: When the Election Protection team found a tweet they wanted to address, they tried using Twitter's "direct message" feature to contact the problem reporter for follow-up. But because of the way Twitter is built, it's difficult to contact a person who isn't already "friends" with the Election Protection Twitter account, @866ourvote. The good news: Even if the tipster wasn't reachable, the problems they reported via Twitter (long lines, lack of translators) theoretically got worked on.

See Also: Twitter To Election Rescue

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1 Comment

Emma Beverage said:
I took a friend to vote on Saturday, November 1, 2008. I can't stand for long periods of time so my friend stood in line for me. I sat in the shade and watched and listened to the crowd as it passed by me. It was obvious that the Black Church’s had organized their congregations to vote early. They had a group drumming in the median of the street. They had people handing out water to people who had been standing in the long lines. They even had people handing out chicken wings because the lines were so long that people were getting hungry! The entire line of voters kept breaking out into spontaneous cheers for Obama. If there were any supporters for McCain in the lines they were so outnumbered that they kept their mouths shut and did not let it be known who they were supporting. The entire wait felt like a festive rally for Obama. We were in line for four hours on Saturday. The lines were just as long the day before. I came away with the impression that Obama was going to take the state by a landslide. I know that the Black Church’s in Oklahoma City are not the only Church’s that organized their congregations. This had to be happening all across this state, as well as the United States. If every vote counts in Oklahoma how did this state stay red? How did the Republicans win? I think we need an honest recount.

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