If I ask you, "What does democracy look like in America?", what comes to mind? Boring images of candidates pressing the flesh? Or perhaps aggravating memories of your most-detested media pundit enjoying the sound of her or his own voice, or a politico simultaneously avoiding a question and mangling the language?
What about images of the fundamental act of democracy: citizens casting their votes?
The Polling Place Photo Project is a participatory panopticon project that asks citizens to capture and share photos of democracy in action. "By documenting their local voting experience on November 7," explains the site, "voters can contribute to an archive of photographs that captures the richness and complexity of voting in America."
Does everything go smoothly at your polling place? Who's staffing the site? Is the machine broken? Is it a shiny new Diebold device or (as in the case of my Congressional district in NYC) something that probably dates from the height of the Cold War? Is someone handing out pamphlets a little too close to the polling place to be legal? Whatever's happening, the project asks you to document it and post with descriptive info via its online form.
The stated goal is to gather images of every polling place in America, so don't worry that yours is too small or humble, or that you belong to the "wrong" party. And it's an open-source project: all images contributed will be rights-controlled under an "Attribution No Derivatives" Creative Commons license, and may be shared with other sites, including pollingplacephotoproject.org, aiga.org, designfordemocracy.org, designobserver.com and newassignment.net.
Unlike some of the video projects Jon has blogged below, The Polling Place Photo Project isn't setting out to catch voting irregularities per se, although that seems likely to happen if the project gets enough submissions. As I read it, the idea is to create an alternative to the typical images that glut the mainstream media during an election day, and also to make transparent what this most basic of American actions looks like. By the very nature of creating a photograph of it, that action gets elevated into something noteworthy -- and just as important as the punditry and posturing by a select few that tends to define even the most local news outlet's political coverage.
It's an experiment in citizen journalism and networked observation.
Note: The rules for what's legal in terms of photography at polling places varies from state to state. Call your state election officials to find out the rules for your locale, and see the Election Blogger's Legal Guide for info and to get questions answered by Stanford Law students.
