Foursquare released the official "I Voted"
badge for the launch of real-time visualization of
check-ins for Election Day.
The joint
effort of experienced political strategists, designers and activists encourages voters to check in at their polling place and share
that they have voted with their friends through social media. Users can unlock the badge by including
the text #ivoted in their polling station check-in.
This map is also intended for future use for the 2012 presidential elections.
The project was designed with three purposes in mind:
- Encourage civic participation through the distribution of the "I Voted" foursquare badge.
- Increase transparency by visualizing how many voters are checking in, and at which polling locations.
- Develop a replicable and scalable system to use for the 2012 Presidential Elections and beyond.
The official site, located at elections.foursquare.com, will go live on November 2nd
and display "I Voted" check-ins throughout the country as they are
happening. The site will allow users to explore check-ins by city and
state, while also providing data about the volume, time of day and
gender that each polling location is experiencing. The interactive map
of check-ins will also be available for embedding on any website.
JESS2 built a custom map visualization around cutting-edge technologies, such as
HTML5, using semantic components and new features like the "canvas"
element for interactive graphics. The site is accessing over 108,000
official polling locations provided by the Voting Information Project, which were then geocoded by the foursquare team and made available to JESS3 through the foursquare API.
"Every
day we see new examples of foursquare encouraging and reinforcing
positive behaviors. We're excited to work with such an amazing group of
partners to harness the power of foursquare to drive civic engagement
through the 'I Voted' badge," said Eric Friedman,
Business Development, foursquare. "With over four million users, foursquare is now at the scale where check-ins communicate a larger
trend, and we're excited to make this data more accessible to the
public."
"For the first time ever, voters are going to show up to their workplaces on Election Day
wearing their physical I Voted sticker, and their co-workers will have
already seen their virtual I Voted badge on foursquare, Facebook and
Twitter," says Jordan Raynor, President of Direct Media Strategies and Founder of the popular Twitter petition on Act.ly, which fueled the community drive for the I Voted badge."