A new website allows journalists and poll-watchers to track polling problems in realtime as voters report on their ballot experience.
Using the now ubiquitous Google Maps API, a simple interface allows voters or poll watchers to report conditions nationwide. It’s a simple good-or-bad metric (plus comments), might be relatively easy to distort and doesn’t address the integrity of the poll, but the appeal here is scale and speed. With voters nationwide reporting in, the map creates a immediate diagnostic of polling trouble spots.
Polling in the U.S. is a decentralized process, with considerable variation from Oregon’s entirely-by-mail approach to Ohio’s touchscreens. Already, there are reports of long lines and misplaced registrations in Ohio.
The site was created by Archon Fung at the Harvard Kennedy School with software engineer Russell Richardson.
— Jonathan Werve
