Election 2008

With the November 4th election fast approaching, how do you sift through the "truthiness" of claims and accusations made during the debates, in political advertisements, in campaign phone calls received, and those of your friends and classmates? Here are a few Internet sites that will help you make decisions about all those claims and more.

Project Vote Smart
The organization defines themselves as "thousands of citizens (conservative and liberal alike) working together, spending endless hours researching the backgrounds and records of thousands of political candidates and elected officials to discover their voting records, campaign contributions, public statements, biographical data (including their work history) and evaluations of them generated by over 100 competing special interest groups." Compare what candidates say to their actual voting records, compare candidate positions on issues, and keep track of what candidates have said in public statements.

You Choose '08--YouTube
YouTube has created a centralized hub of candidate-created Channels that feature campaign videos, speeches, informal chats, behind-the-scenes footage and more.

SourceWatch
SourceWatch is a collaborative project of the Center for Media and Democracy to produce a directory of the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda. In the spirit of Wikipedia, this wiki can be edited by anyone of us with an interest seeing through deceptive information. However, unlike some other wikis, SourceWatch has a policy of strict referencing ("This means that every piece of information in an article should be accompanied by a link to an authoritative source for that information."), and is overseen by a paid editor.

Election 2008 Government Information from the Jean & Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt University
A portal to various Internet resources related to Election 2008, from general election information to campaign finance to Statistics and Polls to voter participation sites.

Be an informed citizen when you vote on Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Voting America: United States Politics, 1840-2008

The Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond has developed a series of "cinematic maps" that visualize "American voting patterns as they moved across the landscape of the United States": Voting America. The maps combine political data with GIS cartography in order to create animated maps of "how Americans voted in presidential elections at the county level for the past 164 years." As you study the current presidential election with your students, these interactive maps visualize voting patterns in relation to voter turnout, population, popular votes versus electoral votes, party strength, etc.

The site also includes several video expert analysis and commentary on the maps, including Dr. Jennifer Erkulwater's "Shifting Party Coalitions and Social Welfare Policy, 1932-2008."