As promised, I’m reporting back on TBD’s election day experiments.
The Voting Issues Crowdmap seemed to be successful. We had a lot fewer reports than in the primaries, but considering D.C. turnout was lower and there were fewer issues reported overall, I’d say that’s accurate. We got 20 accepted reports in and some were very intriguing. Take this one:
My husband & I were told that we could not vote unless we left the children (11 month old & 3 year old) in the hallway. Then the security guard…told us we could take the 11 month old, but had to leave my 3 year old unattended in the lobby & if we didn’t want to do that, then we were unable to vote!
The Foursquare experiment was interesting, though it didn’t yield overwhelming participation. This was kind of expected, considering we didn’t have a lot of lead time and, it turns out, the venues were not easily found on the Foursquare mobile app. Next time, we’ll have to try enlisting Foursquare’s help instead of going out on our own. Here’s how it went down:
At the Virginia venue, 21 people checked in after voting and two left tips about their votes. D.C. had 66 people check in, Maryland had 51 check-ins and six tips about who they voted for in the governor’s race. Those who checked in at both the Maryland and D.C. election venues ended up earning a Swarm badge (if they didn’t have one already). All who checked in and said they were voting got Foursquare’s custom “I Voted” badge. If you missed it, Foursquare also set up a special site to track these voter check-ins as a measure of turnout.