Election Day

November 08, 2016 by

With Jessica McKenzie

  • If you are voting in New York, go log your Election Day experience at Common Cause NY’s Poll Watch. The info collected will be used by nonpartisan nonprofits to help improve our election systems.  

  • Latino Justice’s “Cada Voto Cuenta” voter protection app can be downloaded here.

  • Search for local voting guides on LocalVote.us.  

  • Joe Goldman, the president of the Democracy Fund (full disclosure: a supporter of Civic Hall and Civic Hall Labs), writes “An Ode to the Great American Concession Speech” on Medium.  

  • Pantsuit Nation, the secret Facebook group started just over two weeks ago as a safe place for supporters of Hillary Clinton to congregate, just doubled in size in the last day, from one million to more than two million members as of Monday 8pm ET.  

  • Wanna help feed people waiting in long lines to vote? Go to Polls.pizza.  

  • Can’t wait for those early exit poll leaks that you really shouldn’t listen to? You may want to check out Slate, which is partnering with VoteCastr to publish real-time projects starting at 11am EST based on voter turnout in seven battleground states. Details here.  

  • Snapchat users can morph their faces into Hillary Clinton’s, part of an ad buy from pro-Clinton SuperPac Priorities USA, reports Garett Sloane for AdAge.  

  • Trump supporters have been flooding social media with fake Hillary Clinton ads, Robert Mackey reports for The Intercept.  

  • Hundreds of political science professors have signed an open letter warning that “a Trump presidency would pose a grave threat to American democracy and to other democratic governments around the world.” Curiously, they “call on voters to consider this threat when they cast their votes.”  

  • Speaking of political science professors, our friend and frequent Civicist contributor Dave Karpf writes on Medium that this election is not just a referendum on two candidates, it’s also a test of a decade of assumptions about how campaigns are won today. He writes, “If Donald Trump manages to win on Tuesday, after running a campaign entirely free of the last decade of data-driven know-how, it raises questions about the efficacy of the entire system. A Trump win means, in effect, that decades of research designed to organize and influence voters can be overpowered by a chaotic, from-the-gut performance—if the performance is riveting enough.”  

  • Related: Here’s Micah’s fresh take on how the Democrats have run laps around the Republicans in their use of data in the 2016 race, and why data-driven campaigns aren’t enough.

  • Meanwhile, Daniel Kreiss writes on Medium that we can’t blame social media for Trump, and that it is not, in fact, weakening democracy.

  • Do debates matter? Christine Cupaiuolo’s latest roundup of Rethinking Debate news is up now, and includes stories about the popularity of the U.S. presidential debates in Iran, and how the cheering and jeering sections of debates have long-lasting consequences. 

  • Maybe what you actually need is this nostalgic walk down memory lane to take the edge off, courtesy of Politico’s Ruairi Arrieta-Kenna.

    Remembering Election 2008, Tommy Vietor had this to say about exit polls: “A colleague made the funniest joke I heard that day: “Looking at exit polls is like hooking up with your ex-girlfriend. You know before you do it that you shouldn’t. You do it anyway because you can’t resist. In the short term, you’re gratified, and then it quickly wears off, and you’re ashamed of yourself for the rest of the day.” I think that’s how everybody who looked at exit polls felt, because they’re terrible. They’re so often wrong.”

  • The New York Times’ Mark C. Marino makes the case for voting booth selfies.

  • The design-strategy consultancy verynice has released a toolkit that includes “50 new public sector revenue and impact models” for governments. Sample models include civic incubator programs, food stamps, agricultural subsidies, and universal basic income—perhaps not groundbreaking work but interesting to collect them all in one place. Learn more and download on a pay-what-you-want basis here.

  • Authorea, a platform for collaboratively publishing scientific research in a format that appeals to investors and entrepreneurs, is hosting a panel on crafting and pitching scientific research this Wednesday evening, and the Civic Hall community is invited to attend. Learn more here.

  • Your moment of zen: Enjoy a “Mazel tov cocktail,” tossed into the lexicon of this crazy election by Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes.


From the Civicist, First Post archive