The 5 Habits of Highly Accessible Online Politicians 7:17 AM

Last week, I had the honor of addressing the Florida Association of Counties' Annual Convention in Tampa, FL. I was asked to give a "Social Media 101" presentation, but took my speaker's prerogative to deliver a message I felt was much more critical for my audience of County Commissioners to hear.  I charged the room to think less about the question "How can I use the internet to get myself elected?" and  ask the more important question of "How can we use technology to make government more accessible, efficient and transparent?" 

Here is my full presentation, broken into three parts:

How FourSquare Could GOTV With The "I Voted" Badge 12:01 PM

Yesterday, a petition I started on Twitter urging FourSquare to create an "I Voted" badge for voters who check-in at polling places on Election Day, caught fire and has yet to show signs of letting up.  At the time this post was published, 191 Twitter users have signed the petition, making FourSquare the most petitioned Twitter account through act.ly this week (surpassing Lady Gaga, BP and President Obama) and the second most this month (only behind Bieber).

Obviously the rightroots and the netroots are both pretty fired up about this idea which has the potential to be a massive GOTV effort, but if FourSquare agrees to commit to creating the badge, how exactly would it work?  After an email exchange with a FourSquare contact, I am confident this is the question we need to answer in order for FourSquare to pull the trigger.  That's why I am soliciting your input.  Our ideas combined will be much more powerful than mine alone.

Here's the dilemma: How can FourSquare verify polling places in order to give out "I Voted" badges?  First, Supervisor of Elections offices would need to add their polling places to FourSquare (work an intern can easily do).  Then, FourSquare would need to authenticate the Supervisors' offices as the rightful "owner" of the polling places on FourSquare.  This could be a massive amount of work.  How could we simplify the process?  Maybe the solution is getting one state to commit to the project for a primary election, map out all the precincts, and present it to FourSquare as a pilot program. 

As you can tell, I am thinking out loud here.  Let's put our heads together to find a way to make this work to increase turnout in November.  Imagine thousands of Americans checking into their polling places while posting links to their Facebook friends with a map of their polling place, reminding them and encouraging them to vote.  Pretty cool stuff if you ask me.  Let's find a way to make it work.  Please leave your ideas in the comment section below.  Go!

Reviewing #PdF10 8:37 AM

Last week, I had the great honor of attending my third Personal Democracy Forum in New York City.  This year was even more special than years past, as I was selected as a Google Fellow for the conference.  The work the 19 other Google Fellows are doing at the intersection of politics and technology all around the world is truly amazing, and I was honored to have the opportunity to learn from them at the conference.  Check out these amazing individuals and the work they are doing by clicking here.

This year's #PdF10 focused on answering this question: Can the internet fix politics?  The overwhelming consensus of the conference can be summed up by this: No.  But we can change politics using the internet as a tool.  As promised, I hyper-tweeted the entire conference, attempting to provide you all who couldn't make it to New York with the best tips and tricks I learned at the conference.  An archive of my tweets can be found here courtesy of one of my favorite Twitter apps, SnapBird.org.  The total count of my tweeting frenzy from #pdf10 was 283 tweets, but more importantly (keeping quality v. quantity in mind), I was mentioned on Twitter 452 times at the conference - more than anyone else using the #pdf10 hashtag (though @cshirky and @craignewmark came close).  Thank you as always to everyone who followed along with my barrage of tweets and constantly retweeted my content!

As always, #PdF10 was an amazing two days of learning and sharing with the smartest and most talented people at the intersection of politics and technology.  I can't wait for #PdF11!  Until then, I will leave you with three of my favorite presentations from this year's Personal Democracy Forum:

Closing Plenary with Saul Anuzis, Nick Bilton, Cory Booker, Arianna Huffington, Tim O’Reilly, Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry

"Rethinking Leadership" by Clay Shirky



"Rethinking Media" by Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos

A Preview of the 2010 Personal Democracy Forum 9:19 AM

Every summer, the world's smartest and most talented professionals in the field of online politics descend upon New York City for a two-day gathering known as the Personal Democracy Forum.  In the words of PDF's 2009 incredible keynote speaker, Michael Wesch, "The gathering may have been the highest concentration of amazingly creative and concerned global citizens I have ever been around."

This year, I have the honor and privilege of attending the conference as one of twenty Google Fellows.  My fellow Fellows are doing some amazing work at the intersection of politics and technology and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to learn from them at PDF.  Thank you Google!

This will be my third time attending the Personal Democracy Forum, and according to the speaker line-up, this year's PDF could be the best yet.  For those of you attending PDF, I would love to know which presentations you are most excited to see.  Feel free to leave your favorites in the comment section below.  Here are the five presentations I am most excited to hear:

• How Republicans are Innovating in Online Campaigning: Mindy Finn, Rob Willington, Ryan Gravatt, David All (moderator) 
• Debate: Should Government 'Save' Journalism? Andrew Keen, Marc Cooper, Josh Silver, Jan Schaffer, Jeff Jarvis (moderator)
• Can the internet Fix Politics?: Newt Gingrich
• Refining Your Social Media Smarts: Campaign Successes From YouTube to Facebook to Twitter: Jonah Sieger, Barnet Zitron, JD Lasica, Michael Bassik (moderator) 
•  Campaign Grid: Best Practices in Online Fundraising and List-Building Steve Moore, Julie Germany, Michael Palmer, Richard Masterson (moderator)

If you can not make it to New York for this year's Personal Democracy Forum, there are still ways for you to follow the conference from home.

• Follow the #pdf10 or #pdf2010 hashtags on Twitter
• Like last year, I will be "hyper-tweeting" the event, providing you with the latest tips and best-practices discussed at the conference.  You can follow me @JordanRaynor for the latest from #pdf10.
• Check the PDF Video Archives throughout the weekend for video of conference presentations.

Twitter Mentions Accurately Predict Winners in UK Elections 8:59 AM

Can the amount of times your candidate is mentioned on Twitter actually predict their fate on Election Day? A new report released by Tweetminister on Twitter and the UK elections says yes!

For the UK's recent elections, Tweetminister set out to discover if there was any sort of correlation between the number of times a particular candidate or party was mentioned on Twitter and how that candidate or party performed on Election Day. The results are astounding.

Tweetminister found that their individual seat predictions based on Twitter mention volume were 69% accurate while regional party performance predictions were 87.5% accurate and national predictions were 90.5% accurate.

The full report is available below for your downloading and highly recommended sharing pleasure:
Tweetminster Predicts: Findings

Endorsements Don't Matter, Unless They Come From You 7:37 PM

"My coffee cup endorses Rubio. The lint I just brushed off my suit has endorsed Rubio. 97.9% of the objects in the known universe mass endorse Rubio.”

Those statements, tweeted today by leading GOP strategist Patrick Ruffini, are just as insightful as they are humorous. The political collapse of Charlie Crist's Republican candidacy for the U.S. Senate has brought on an avalanche of endorsements over the past week for Crist's GOP rival, Marco Rubio. As each endorsement has been rolled out by Rubio's supporters, I have found myself re-declaring this statement – Endorsements don’t matter to voters anymore!

Now more than ever, the power of the press and the political establishment over public opinion is waning and the power vacuum is being filled by our social-graphs – our Facebook friends, the people we follow on Twitter and the numerous un-traditional information outlets we now turn to for news and opinion. As I have said before, our friends are killing the newspaper editors, and for that matter, the power of political endorsements.  It is more important than ever for candidates to develop meaningful relationships with influential individuals who will become their campaign's ambassadors online.    If these relationships are genuine and extend beyond asking for money, individuals will buy into campaigns and will recruit their online "friends" for your cause.  

Six months ago, I was asked to advise a candidate on how they could mount a formidable challenge to an established political titan. The opponent of the candidate I was advising had locked up all of the early establishment endorsements and money and was undoubtedly running a Traditional 3M campaign (Money ---> Momentum ---> Message).  My advice was simple, but difficult to achieve – do everything in your power to appear to be publicly shunning the political establishment. Instead of going after high-profile endorsements, ask regular Joe and Jane Shmos to look into a camera and tell the world why they “endorse” you. Make the campaign about why establishment endorsements are the problem and not the solution and communicate directly with voters via the web to earn their “endorsements” instead. Crazy? Maybe. But I still think it could have worked.

All of the endorsements in the world didn’t help Charlie Crist defeat his primary challenger. In fact, Crist’s endorsements ended up hurting him more than they helped as grassroots conservatives rose up against what they perceived as a candidate being forced down their throats by the Party establishment.

Voters are no longer making decisions primarily based on what political endorsements, press releases or advertisements tell them – they are making decisions based on the opinions of the most important people in their online and offline lives – their friends.

Cross-posted to TechRepublican.com

TIEA Passes House Unanimously 4:17 PM

Great news for those of us who have been following Florida's Technology in Elections Act - the bill passed the Florida House of Representatives today by a unanimous vote of 114-0.  Here is the full release from State Representative Eric Eisnaugle (R-FL), the bill's sponsor:

Today, Representative Eric Eisnaugle’s (R-Orlando) Technology in Elections Act (HB 869) passed the House unanimously 114-0. The legislation modernizes rules governing the use of technology in political campaigns. Current law does not contemplate the use of many new technologies or websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google by voters and campaigns. Large portions of campaign budgets are currently spent on expensive traditional media like radio and television advertisements. However, voters increasingly report a preference to learn about candidates and issues on the internet.

“It’s vital to ensure that voters and candidates can hold a dialogue on the internet on the sites voters use,” said Eisnaugle. “If we want to lower the cost of elections, we must ensure that free, public websites are available for official candidate use.”

The Technology in Elections Act provides safe harbors on disclaimer requirements for candidates using text messaging, social networking sites, downloadable applications, blogs, message board postings and text link advertisements. A fall legal challenge in a St. Petersburg mayoral race raised questions regarding the use of Google ad links and therefore other media and technologies by candidates. Representative Darryl Rouson (D–St. Petersburg) co-prime sponsored the bill.

The legislation also included language to bring transparency to opaque Electioneering Communications Organizations (ECOs). The ECO language requires timely reporting on where and how these organizations raise and expend their funds.