Just before the 2004 election, Jamais Cascio wrote about the "Participatory Panopticon at the Polls," where ordinary citizens with digital cameras and phones prepared to monitor polling places and capture any irregularities, uploading them to sites like the now defunct "Video Vote Vigil," described by Jamais as "clearinghouses of citizen documentation of voting problems." It was a good idea, though nothing much was revealed in the 2004 videos. (A political consultant I know noted that, if someone's manipulating an election, they do their work before election day, and much of it is procedural wrangling that's perfectly visible if you look for it.)
"Video the Vote" is a new, nonpartisan site, set up to monitor the 2006 elections. Like 2004's Video Vote Vigil, this site calls for electronic documentation of polling problems by ordinary citizens with digital cameras and camera phones. The site's related to the film American Blackout, which "chronicles the recurring patterns of voter disenfranchisement from Florida 2000 to Ohio 2004 while following the story of Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney." There's another related site called "End the Blackout" for coordinating viewings of the film, which was produced as a project of the Guerilla News Network. Whether the site will pick up actual irregularities remains to be seen, but the presence of citizens with cameras might also work as a deterrent.
