Say ‘I Voted’ with Your Foursquare Badge
Mobile social networking application Foursquare has partnered with a team of political strategists, designers and activists to release the official “I Voted” badge in conjunction with launching a real-time visualization of check-ins for Election Day.
In another unique application of Foursquare, NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock became the first person to “check in” from space.
Wheelock’s check in to the space station launched a partnership between NASA and Foursquare to connect its users to the space agency, enabling them to explore the universe and discover Earth. (Read: Social Networking from the Outer Space)
The joint elections effort encourages voters to check-in at their polling place and share that they have voted with their friends through social media. Including the text #ivoted in their polling station check-in will unlock the badge.
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; and
- 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 (U.S.) as they are happening.
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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 embed on any website.
JESS3, a creative agency, built a custom map visualization around technologies like 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.
You can learn more about ‘I Voted’ by visiting: elections.foursquare.com
JESS3 informed about this initiative Wednesday, Oct. 27.
