Volunteer Information Call 3pm

[Matthew Cooperrider]

Hi All,

One of our newest volunteers, Julie Roth, has pledged some time to help us draft informational materials for on-the-ground volunteers.  This is a point of overlap with Voter Suppression Wiki, so Jon Pincus and I are having a call with Julie at 3pm today.  Anyone who's interested in this aspect of the project is welcome to join.

Conf. line: 712-432-1100
Access number: 869911#

We want to make sure volunteers have in-depth materials for managing the situation on-the-ground, as well as simple handouts that can be delivered to potential reporters.  If you can't make it, post your thoughts at http://votereport.pbwiki.com/Volunteer%20Kit and we'll take them into consideration.

Matt

[Eric Odom]

Would that be Eastern time?

Eric Odom
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ericjodom
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=699281645

[Allison Fine]

Hi, Matt, I'm glad this is moving forward, and I'm sorry I can't join the call this afternoon but want to echo Micah's earlier comment about this being too complex.  We pledged to the election protection groups that we would gather and present the data - they could then use it for their efforts - including legal and technical assistance to voters.  your outline of verifying tweets is, I think, not only beyond our capacity but certainly too much to ask election day volunteers to do.

I had envisioned sweepers as volunteers who would watch specific zip codes for problems that arise -- and then let the election protection folks -- or jon -- know so that they can investigate it further.

I think sweepers would be a great addition to our effort, but would suggest boiling it down to a simpler effort that will be easy for volunteers to be successful managing.

AF

[Andy Carvin]

Agreed. The onus of verification is on those of us who have the capacity to do that – Election Protection, NPR, etc. Just let the data flow and we’ll sort out what the trends are and where we should follow up.

 

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[Matthew Cooperrider]

Sure, but 3 coders are already planning to meet tonight to build it and 2 people have already signed up for data cleanup on the wiki...

[Matthew Cooperrider]

I gotta run right now, but there's two things here

1. cleaning up data so it's useful
2. direct messaging people with problems

I agree that we can drop #2.  #1 seems doable still.

[Allison Fine]

Well, if you want to simplify the effort, I would see if they could code something else tonight and if the volunteers want to get assigned specific zip codes - as early birds we'll give them something really juice like Palm Beach county.

[Matthew Cooperrider]

yup

[Andy Carvin]

What I meant was, we can do the followup ourselves, but the more tools we have to contact them, the better. We can tweet people, of course, because their twitter name will appear. Would be great to have access to phone #s for voicemail and iPhone users, which sounds possible from what Dave was telling me.

 

ac

 

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[Allison Fine]

We're certainly hoping that Twitters will help one another or that the groups, like the coalition, that are monitoring the stream can help folks.  In terms of #1 my concern is about the volume and whether that's doable or not.

Andy, I am also concerned (seems to be my leitmotif today!) about privacy issues.  It's one thing to send a message to someone (and even if we know that by doing so we are getting their info, they  might not) it's another to use it beyond the initial engagement.  Unless we were to put that expressly on the web site - which might then depress usage.  Open to suggestions on that.

AF

[Andy Carvin]

Yeah, it’s a tough question. But I just know that vote reports won’t get on air unless there is a path for verification. That’s pretty standard for all news orgs. So we’ll probably end up over-relying on tweets rather than text messages, for example, because at least the tweets will allow us to @ them back. -ac

[Sze Wong]

From the iPhone front, we are currently asking their name and is
capturing their device id. However, that's not enough to be able to
contact them back. Currently there is no clean way to capture the
user's phone number from the device (and Apple probably will never
allow that to happen). So if needed we can add an email/phone fields
so if they want they can type in the contact info.

I'll talk to Dave tonight about it.

Sze

--
Sze Wong
President
sw...@zerionconsulting.com
Zerion Consulting
Problem? Solved.

[Andy Carvin]

It might be too late for this, but maybe we could add a "can we contact you about your report?" yes/no option, and if they say yes, let them supply their phone or email.

ac

> do that - Election Protection, NPR, etc. Just let the data flow and we'll

[Sze Wong]

Dave, I'm going to put a iPhone ver 1.01 wish list section in wiki.
Please move/update as you see fit.

Andy, We are not sure if we even have another chance to post an update
(the current version has not been approved as far as I know) but I'll
work with Dave to figure something out.

Thanks.

Sze

[Matthew Cooperrider]

By the way, I think there's some confusion here about the 3pm call.  The call is simply about what will be on the flyers that will be in the "volunteer kit" that we created for election day.  These flyers are for people who actually plan to be at polling places educating people.

Jon Pincus was already working on this for VSwiki, and we want to make sure the TVR procedure is integrated into that.

Matt

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 1:41 PM, Allison Fine <afin...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Dave Troy]

Sze, you may not have noticed it, but I made the "name" field title be
"About You" and the prompt underneath it be "Please provide your name,
email address, or your Twitter ID."

They are not required to enter anything in the field, but some
percentage will enter either an email or twitter ID, and it should be
obvious and give a good pool to draw from.

Dave

[Sze Wong]

Cool, then we are covered.

Thanks.

Sze

--

[Jon Pincus]

A prototype design on the VSWiki is at http://www.votersuppression.net/page/Wisconsin+%22one-pager%22 ... it would be great to include something about TVR on this, and conversely it would be great to make it available to people interested in TVR who are also interested in being a resource on election day. 

jon

--
liminal states, my blog
Tales from the Net, a work in progress

[Andy Carvin]

Excellent.

-----Original Message-----
From: twitterv...@googlegroups.com [mailto:twitterv...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Sze Wong
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 2:48 PM
To: twitterv...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [twittervotereport] Re: Volunteer Information Call 3pm