Transparent Disaster, Cont’d

Yesterday I observed that today’s election will be the first example of a transparent voting process, one exposed to the light of day by uncountable acts of “citizen journalism”–reports by members of the public of problems at the polls.

I predicted, somewhat boldly, that so many reports of malfeasance, misbehavior and mischief would surface via the social web that the entire process–and some outcomes–will be disputed for. . .a long time. Transparency cuts both ways, I argued.

“A freaking mess” is how I believe I described the likely result.

Last night, Ali Velshi of CNN baldly reported that the network had already received 30,000 reports of problems at the polls. He said the network had staff to vet the reports and follow up with election officials. Good luck with that, as they say.

Maybe none of this content will be seized upon by partisans and used to dispute election results.

Maybe the campaigns, from President to Congressional to way down the ticket, won’t be mining all this citizen-generated data to support their legal challenges.

Maybe election officials won’t be stymied by questions of what’s a legit problem and what’s not.

Maybe the political persuasion of the Secretaries of State will have no bearing on these adjudications.

And maybe Bob Barr will be elected President today.

Hey, you never know. It’s been a crazy season.

I’ll be paying attention to the action throughout the day. Meantime, I offer a few links to some of the most prominent poll-monitoring efforts. Have a problem at the polls? Report it to all of ‘em!

Election Protection: A lawyer-led, non-partisan clearinghouse of allegations of voting irregularities

Twitter #VoteReports: Live Tweets from people who have just voted, plus lots of issue/candidate spammery. Also Twiter Vote Report, which aggregates on various databases, including a map

CNN Voter Hotline to report problems; CNN citizen iReports

PBS/YouTube Video Your Vote

RedState’s blog aggregating reports of questionable voting behavior

HuffingtonPost’s “Voting Problems” content aggregation page

Current TV’s aggregation of poll problem news and project with Digg

Common Cause’s Protect the Vote phone and online report service

TVOne’s collection of viewer reports of problems at the polls