WeVote
From MashupCamp
Contents |
Discuss this topic online
Let's put our heads together and explore ways that technology can help increase voter awareness of the candidates and issues, and also get more people to the polls. Specifically, how can we mashup all the good data out there along with the current crop of community, blogging, communications, identity, and other media services to make a site that takes our democratic process into the 21st century.
Many times at the *camps I've heard people say that lots of good ideas float around but that little action happens post event; this is a "feel good" project that I'm sure many people would love to dive into.
Mission Statement
WeVote: A non-partisan non-political effort to use technology to increase the number of people who vote, and to help those voters make more informed decisions.
Problems
- Discovery: I'd like an easy way to see who the candidates are and their official positions *in writing*
- Community: I'd like an on-line forum to discuss the issues, and I'd like controls to keep antagonists at-bay
- Alignment: Instead of a simple two-party system, I'd like to create a profile and then have candidates suggested whom match my profile
- Online Activism: I'd like to make my voice heard from the convenience of my home
- Accountability/Transparency: I want easy tools to discover candidates records; let's add as much transparency to government as possible
- Filtering: From all the news that's available, filter it down to a relevant stream just for me
- Objectivity: Is it possible to have news that's relatively free of posturing and emotion? Can we vote objectively?
- Complexity: Is government simply too complicated to distill down into explanations that voters can handle?
- Does the Truth hurt too much? Are there necessary government evils that voters will refuse to understand?
Solution
That is what we're here to figure out...
Contributors
- Hardware/network infrastructure: can someone donate/lend some machines and bandwidth?
- Coders: people to fit it all together
- Datasources: government data, news feeds, grass-roots efforts, etc.
- Services: The Web 2.0 crowd has created some really great services, some of them free and some not; whose work can we leverage?
- Eyes and ears: grass roots support to find and flesh out the data
Similar/Complementary projects...
Who Came to this Session?
Mono Simeone - City college of San Francisco, GIS Center - he wants to get mashups to people and teach people how to use them
Matt Rowe - frappr
Cassie Dara-Abrams - interested in political action and social networking
Vidal Graupera - just interested in seeing what this session is about
Mike langberg - mercury news, here at the beginning
Mike Prince - the guy who organized this session
Paul Johnson
Elizabeth Brown
and one more person who came in late, didn't catch name.
Notes from Session
projectvotesmart - really cool, type in your zip code and you can find lots of things in your area. online statement of people who are running (interesting to see who doesn't put up statements about themselves).
really interesting opportunities to figure out who to vote for.. not just two party system...
online activism- instead of hitting the streets, hit your computer
filtering, figuring out how to find what info is relevant to yourself. talk with RSS feeds people to help filter
is it possible to find info that's not biased?? help segrete info from opinions
there's so many complex ideas - maybe a point of these voting sites is to make it LESS complicated
frappr guy- he used to work at a petition site and it was very 1998. frappr is newer. petition site: code hasn't been touched, anyone can go in and start their own petition. can have care2 (??) promote it for you or you can do it yourself. have to pay to get petition faxed and
frappr groups- set up group that says we don't like abortion (example). we're going to vote against ppl who don't like abortion. frappr's maps help make this very clear where the people are. then the people running can see these pages where everyone's commented about that they don't like abortion
pot hole example
guy w/ elizabeth- this is a great way for ppl running to set this up and start conversations in the frappr community and get input.
frappr- we're doing that for bands and celebrities who can sort of promote themselves
guy leading- how do all the voters find the information about who to vote for?
vidal Graupera- voting is an information overload problem. there's 30 props to vote for and voting yes means no and no means yes. there's just so much stuff!
leader - would you use a tool that you would fill out a profile and then the service would find the people who you vote for going along with your views and opinions.
what is WeVote?
wouldn't it be cool to find all the info out there and then mash it up and give it to voters on a website (in an easy way).
Paul: he used to work the environmental defense site and people would type in their zip code and then they could find out everything that could kill them!
frappr Question- what's the idea of funding with this WeVote?
leader- there's no funding for this, it's just an idea... i just want to see who to vote for and to figure it out. i don't want to just vote for one party's people. it would be cool for these kinds of profile pgs and see what the real ideas are of these candidates.
another thing that would be cool would be to not focus on the candidates but to focus on issues and a sort of a portfolio of everyone who answers these issues. people who want to find out about these issues.
ended at 11:55AM. Notes written by CassieDara-Abrams
