Voters Use Twitter To Track Election Day By Mobile Phone

The 2008 presidential vote may go down in history as being the first mobile-friendly elections of all time. You might argue that it started with Barack Obama’s well-documented usage of text-messaging as a way to keep voters informed, but it has now even taken center stage at the polls. Perhaps the biggest demonstration of this is at The Twitter Vote Report, a site developed by a team of volunteer developers using Twitter, which provides a live stream of user-generated updates providing the latest on wait times and other voting conditions nationwide. Found at http://blog.twittervotereport.com/, it shows dozens of live updates that come in every minute. Reports note things like how long the wait times are, whether they’ve run out of paper ballots, and if the electronic machines are working. For instance, voters reported in Tampa that a machine was jammed, in North Carolina that McCain supporters were yelling at Obama supporters to go home, and many people reported busier than normal polls, but no lines.

It’s something of a test for Twitter, which has had trouble in the past accommodating even daily traffic spikes. Since then, the company has raised millions of dollars to buy extra infrastructure to boost capacity. The Twitter servers have already failed once today in the mid-morning, although the issues were resolved in about 35 minutes. While they were down, the site recommended viewing the information on NPR, which is just one of the many participating organizations.

Users of The Twitter Voter Report are able to provide their updates either by calling a phone number, sending a text message, or downloading an application to the iPhone or Google (NSDQ: GOOG) phone. On the Web site, it’s apparent that all forms are being used liberally. The results of the live updates are being mapped and charted, so you can see wait times across the country. The site is also encouraging the use of tags, which helps categorize the information. For all messages, users should add the tag #votereport, but there are others for zip codes, machine problems and wait times. A full list can be found here.

It’s hard to say how many people are using the service. There’s no running tally for how many messages are pouring in, although the updates appear to be streaming in almost constantly. The VoteReport App has been downloaded up to 5,000 times on the Android Market, but on the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone App store, the application did not even register in the top 100 free downloads.

Photo credit: Grant Barrett

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