Actors

• voter: a voter the polls who wants to report a success/failure
• member: somebody who's actively volunteering, including a "more trusted user", Sweeper or SuperTweeter

Voter reports 

Reporting on conditions - formatted report

Voter sends a tweet to #votereport giving their location and a comment on one of the attributes they know from the votereport site:

• location - either L: XXXX -or- zipcode XXXXX -or- some variant that can be distinguished
• wait - either wait:(minutes) -or- waittime:(minutes)
•  

Use Cases

Voter wants to report on the number of machines at their polling location and how many are working

Voter wants to report a broken machine

Voter wants to report on people being harrassed at the polling location by police, by lawyers, by activists, etc

Voter wants to report on length of the line at their location (e.g. how many people, how long the line is)

Voter wants to report how long it took for them to vote (e.g. tovote:(minutes))

Voter wants to know what are the commands available via #votereport

Voter wants to report an electronic voting machine that took the wrong vote when entered

Via Twitter

Via SMS

Via iPhone

Via phone

Via web (presumably VoteStory '08)

Amplify voter report

Member wants to report on issue but low quantity of datapoints do not provide enough visibility of what is happening at the polling location.  Need to ask votereport for amplification/manification of their report (for example - manification of their tweets by some factor for visibility sake)

• Suggestion - play the font size game as done in tag clouds?

SuperTweeter sends in reports for several voters

(particularly important in areas where Twitter usage is low -- which are likely to be the ones most at risk)

Member signs up

Via Web

• Member goes to twittervotereport.com and registers
• If a twitter member:
  • Member becomes a follower of @votereport
  • votereport then auto-follows the member
• If not a twitter member, offer option to sign up at twitter (?)
• Request cell phone number and carrier (to also have direct connection)
  • Have a confirmation sequence (is this important?)
• Location request (is this important?)
• Poll location request (is this important?)

Via twitter

• Member follows @votereport (f votereport)

• votereport autofollows member twitter account
• votereport requests polling location with formatted message

Tracking and Acting

Monitoring at Max Magnitude

Sweeper sends out an alert

- identifies potential pattern

- identifies precinct (may not be unique in urban areas)

- validates data

- gets feedback and confirms

- sends notification

Sweeper detects bad data

- identifies pattern

- gets feedback

- purges data

- alerts somebody to look for broader pattern

Community activists looking out for local problems

what information and visualizations are important, how to convey confidence levels and minimize false alarms, how can they confirm itand to evaluate the severity?  how to determine specific precinct if it's not known?  what should they do next?  who do they contact if they have proble and know what to do/who to contact next?

Election protection group gets alert

what information is there to confirm it, allow the group to evaluate the severity, and know what to do/who to contact next?

Local reporter/blogger is following for a story

National reporter/blogger is following for a story