Contents

• Definition of Hashtags
• Basic Hashtags
• Advanced Hashtags

Definition

A hashtag is any word in twitter which is immediately preceded by the '#' symbol (a.k.a the hash).  By using a hashtag, you're signalling that you want people to be able to find your tweet and associate it with other tweets that contain the same hashtag.

In the case of VoteReport - we should use the hashtag for votereport (#votereport) and then the name/value pairing for infromation gathering.  Similar to what you see on URLs, name/value pairs are used to set conditions on where you are and what is happening.

To see the actual implementation of the hashtags, look at the source code:

http://github.com/davetroy/votereport/tree/master/db/migrate/20081023040000_add_tags.rb 

Basic Hashtags

#votereport

You must at least include this tag in your tweet for us to be able to use your information.  There are a number of additional pieces of information you can add from there

#EP{two-letter state code} - e.g. #EPNY for New York, #EPOH for Ohio

This is for individuals with serious legal issues only.  Are you or someone you know being prevented from voting?  Tweet the appropriate code and a brief message about your problem, and we'll tweet back with next steps.  We have a whole coalition of voting experts supporting us.

Tags for additional issues

We're trying to keep things simple, so we've created 3 basic tags to alert us to issues that might occur.

• #machine - use this tag to signal a problem with a voting machine
• #registration - use this tag to signal problems with the registration process, people being turned away for paperwok reasons
• #wait:time - use this tag to signal a long wait.  Add a colon and the wait time in minutes - e.g. #wait:30 for half an hour, #wait:120 for two hours.

Advanced Hashtags

We're trying to keep the hashtags simple for our tweeters, but here are some more advanced hashtags that have been suggested.

#challenges -- there are widespread challenges occurring at the location.

#hava -- accessibility issues (vision, etc.).  [HAVA is the acronym is for Help Americans Vote Act]

#ballots -- out (or running out) of paper ballots

#good/#bad -- the overall experience

Our hope is that our more committed and engaged volunteers will be able to use these to provide richer and more specific data.

Questions

• How do we determine that a report is not fraudulent?  Twitter ensures that tweets are accepted by you because of an explicit choice you make
  • (e.g. I accept that you are following me if I am open, but I can block you from recieving my tweets or
  • I can make you explicitly request to follow me via protected tweets
• My suggestions was a process that requires the person to "sign on" initially - where they do a sequence like
  • They send -> f votereport
  • We then send -> "Thanks for joining votereport.  Please respond with where youre voting (zip:XXXXX or PL:FL-19)
  • They send -> @votereport zip:10023
  • We send -> Thanks - youre polling location is: BLAH BLAH, Florida