The Google.com/elections site's navigation allows browsing by candidate or issue. It also features a "Trends" browser, showing how candidates are doing in Google search, Google News mentions and YouTube views, and an 'On the Ground' viewer showing stories overlaid on a map.

Google began a concerted overhaul of its political resources in October. It shut down the previous incarnation, the Public Sector and Elections Lab, and launched the Google Politics and Elections Team. The new team planned to "build tools to connect voters to the electoral process."

In November, Google launched an election hub for Egypt, which held its first elections since longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak was ousted. Today's launch of the U.S. elections page offers a similar set of features to empower voters and enhance campaigns, all built on Google's platform of valuable Web tools.

Where do you get your campaign news?

In a blog post tagged Goodbye, Jake Parrillo of Google's Politics & Elections Team shut down the 2.5 year old Public Sector and Elections Lab blog and announced the launch of the company's new Google Politics and Elections Team Blog. The new blog will expand coverage of Google's growing activities aimed at increasing voter engagement.

From Google Moderator to live YouTube to the company's work analyzing search terms durring debates and more - there's a lot that Google can do to engage with elections, all of it connected by the social thread of fast-growing social network Google Plus.

Recent blog posts on the new Google Elections blog have focused on search trends around the Republican candidate debates and Google's participation in the global Open Government Partnership project.

The company today announced a contest for members of the public who could identify interesting political trends in Google search data.

While the creation of tools to encourage public analysis and engagement with elections might be framed as a non-partisan activity, at least in the United States it would probably be naive to understand it that way.

Google has also launched an extensive Egyptian elections page full of info on candidates, major issues and polling stations. The information is provided by Egypt's Higher Elections Committee, but Google's page enhances the content with Google News, Maps and its other election tools. Google is building tools and programs to improve elections around the world, and this landmark election in Egypt is a storybook example of Web technology as a force for open and accountable government.

The Mubarak regime tried, even as it fell, to restrict access to Web services in Egypt in order to contain the uprising. It first blocked Twitter, then Facebook and Google services, and then it went for a full-on Internet blackout. The Internet struck back, though. Anonymous targeted Mubarak's regime websites, and hackers and bloggers in Egypt and around the world lent their support, even facing arrest.

Google lent its support, too, featuring YouTube videos of the uprisings. The extensive resources Google offers Egyptian voters on its elections page today follow through on that support with an effort to make democracy better through Web technology.

You can read more about Google's celebration of this historic election on the Google blog.

The votes have been tallied and the results are in. OpenSocial Foundation members have selected Jay Parikh of Ning and Joseph Smarr of Plaxo as their community representatives.

Sixty-eight percent of the OpenSocial Foundation membership voted in the election. Parikh and Smarr were selected by members from 13 nominees. Each will serve a one-year term on the OpenSocial Foundation Board.

Ads with political content are subject to restrictions on the YouTube.com homepage. Update: YouTube contacted us and said that to the contrary: "Provided the ads do not involve accusations or attacks relating to an individual's personal life or character, they can run on the YouTube homepage." Interested parties should read the Terms of Service for themselves.

One of the forbidden categories is "Political & Religious Content" that includes "inflammatory or exploitative uses of political or religious issues."

But Google, which owns YouTube, hopes to see mainstream politicians spend about 10% of their advertising budgets online.

"In stream ads are probably the hottest thing in political advertising right now," says a Google advertising executive told Fast Company.

Candidates can place targeted ads in videos based on a user's interests, location and demographic information via Google's DoubleClick platform. Videos can be up to 30 seconds long.

YouTube is clearly getting more attention from political campaigns, which in the past have re-posted TV ads and created online-only ads to collect views and vitriolic comments.

Which begs the question: How long before all of us can vote from the comfort of our laptop or smartphone?

Darin Gibby, a patent attorney and partner at Kilpatrick, Townsend and Stockton and author of Why Has America Stopped Inventing?, said the technology used in online voting is similar to that used to process credit card transactions. Voters may receive a temporary password or be asked by a web portal for information that only they would know.

If the password "was stolen by a fraudster during voting, it wouldn't matter as the password would expire the moment it is used," Gibby said. "For those who want additional security, biometrics could be used - meaning that a fingerprint ID mechanism could be hooked into a USB port for further identification. Although this may seem costly, many scanners like this already come standard on some laptop models."

In other words, online elections have the potential to decrease voter fraud. But changing the status quo, particularly in government, is always an uphill battle.

"Implementing a secure, cost-effective voting system is easily within the grasp of any state, even those with ailing budgets. Cost simply isn't an issue, and neither is security," Gibby said. "It all comes does to the simple fact that we have nobody in government positions who is willing to step forward and make the change."

Of course, statements about net neutrality's death hardly seem new. Its demise has been predicted for months, particularly after a Federal Appeals Court's decision this spring challenged the FCC's authority to stop Comcast from throttling P2P traffic.

Some analysis following last week's election has tried frame the Democrats' loss, in part, as a referendum on net neutrality, with Verizon going so far as tweeting that every Democratic candidate that supported the PCCC's net neutrality pledge lost their election.

But as Techdirt's Mike Masnick counters, these particular candidates were not incumbents and were largely running in Republican strongholds. Furthermore, some Democrats who signed anti-net neutrality pledges also lost their election bids. "Sorry," says Masnick, "net neutrality simply was not an important issue in this year's election." Rather, there were plenty of other reasons why Democratic candidates lost seats. ("It's the economy, stupid.")

If Congress Won't Do Anything about Net Neutrality, Will the FCC?

Regardless, net neutrality does remain an important issue. And while the Republicans will control Congress, Democrats do still hold a majority of FCC seats. "The ball is clearly in the FCC's court now," said Art Brodsky, communications director for Public Knowledge, a digital rights group supporting new net neutrality rules, in an interview with Computerworld. However, when the FCC published the agenda for its November Open Meeting, discussions of net neutrality did not make the docket.

So with or without the support of Congress, it remains to be seen whether the FCC will move forward to address net neutrality, or whether it will simply focus its efforts on its National Broadband Plan, something that seems less contentious and that has more bipartisan support.

Daniel Teweles, VP of Business Development and Marketing at the Personal Democracy Forum, is reasonably pleased with the outcome so far. But there is an appreciable distance left to travel to make the platform relevant.

The next steps in this experiment are, first, for users to vote as to whether the candidates actually answered the questions they were given; or did they, as we said before, employ "circumlocutions, legerdemain, spin and talking points."

The step after that Tewles describes as "huge."

"We're finalizing a deal to take 10Questions as a turnkey platform internationally. The idea remains the same wherever our platform is used: the internet can and should be used to further democratize processes and politics."

A couple of the races that stand out for the candidate's participation include the race for Senate in California between the Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer and the Republican challenger, Carly Fiorina. Another is the race for Georgia governor between Republican Nathan Deal and Democrat Roy Barnes.

A couple of responses, one from Fiorina and another from Barnes follow. To vote on whether you think participating candidates answered the questions or not, visit 10Questions.

The non-profit organization called Sunlight Foundation, whose mission is to use the Internet to make information about the U.S. government more accessible,  just released a visualization of campaign contributions from 1990-2008, broken down by industry sectors and party lines. From this app, profiled on Programmable Web, you can see how the finance, insurance, and real estate industries spend more than others. The visualization is interactive - just push the play button after configuring the settings. It was built using Google Motion Chart and data from OpenSecrets.

2) Visualizing Earmarks

Earmarks are a hot topic in the current U.S. Presidential election. You can visit  the web site earmarkwatch.org to investigate those spending measures inserted by members of Congress into bills that direct taxpayer dollars to their pet projects. But an even easier way to track which states are the worst for using earmarks, this visualization over on ManyEyes is useful. Wow, look at Alaska!

3) Visualizing Election Polls

University of Utah computer scientists have written software they hope will eventually allow anyone to interactively and visually analyze election results, political opinion polls or other surveys. The software displays data in the form of "radial" charts that are doughnut-shaped and include features of traditional pie charts and bar graphs. The charts are interactive and animated, too. You can watch a video demonstration over here, but unfortunately, the poll-analysis software isn't quite ready for prime time. What a tease!

4) Electoral College Prediction Tracker

This interactive visualization widget provides an overview of the predicted outcome of the U.S. presidential election. The rows depict the results from different news agencies (The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, etc.) and the columns represent the different U.S. states. The states width is based on the number of electoral votes they have available. Political bloggers will really like this one, too - it's embeddable!

5) The 2008 Presidential Election In The Blogosphere

This next visualization, perspctv.com, is an informational dashboard that summarizes and graphs the Internet activity relating to the 2008 presidential elections. The charts compare the similarities as well as the differences between the mainstream media and user-generated content, such as that found on political blogs. Currently, the graphs include CNN polls, new mentions, blogosphere mentions, Twitter mentions, a U.S. electoral map, and Google Trends-based timelines. (via information aesthetics)

Jonathan has been a consistent user of Facebook. His account, "liked" by almost 240,000 people, is robust and updated frequently, sometimes several times a day. But given the relative lack of connectivity in that nation, some have theorized that using Facebook to declare was a way to attract substantial media attention in his candidacy.

Today, I confirm that after wide and thorough consultations spanning the six geo-political zones that make up Nigeria, with members of my family, my party, the opposition, civil society, the Private Sector, members of the Labour Unions, religious leaders, youths and student groups and our revered traditional institutions, I Goodluck Ebele Jonathan by the grace of God hereby offer myself and my services to the Nigerian people as a candidate for the office of President in the forth coming 2011 elections.

Cameroonian blogger Zuzeeko Abeng noted that Jonathan started his Facebook page in June of this year "in fulfillment of a promise made to students at the University of Port Harcourt."

"Pundits would term the creation of a Facebook page a 'tactic' and an attempt to score political points, but without going into politics, permit me to reiterate that by creating a Facebook page, Goodluck Jonathan has demonstrated skills of good governance, leadership, transparency and accountability."

In the first 48 hours Jonathan's page got liked by 7,000 new users. In the last hour, it has grown by over 150. His declaration has gotten over 5,000 likes and 6,500 comments.

Jonathan's major opponent is former strongman and military dictator, Ibrahim Babangida, who made his announcement in a traditional fashion, at a rally on Wednesday.

Babangida was instrumental in nullfying the 1993 elections, which were a bright spot in an electoral landscape characterized primarily by fraud and corruption. Nigeria is an oil-rich country and member of OPEC, with as many difficulties as resources. The Niger Delta is severely compromised, both ecologically and socially.

Elections are likely to take place in January of 2011.

As far as we can tell, President Goodluck Jonathan is the first candidate for the presidency of a nation to declare that presidency on Facebook. In fact, we can't find any candidate that has declared first on any social media. If you know of any, correct our misapprehensions in the comments. And if you're Nigerian, how did you feel about this act? Was it a stunt or a candidate keeping up with the times?

Abjua photo from Wikimedia Commons

The U.S. Voter Info site was developed in partnership with with several state and local election officials, the League of Women Voters, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and others involved in the Voting Information Project. In true Google form, the site appears to as just a simple interface that hides the complicated data processing going on in the back-end. All you have to do to use the new site is enter in your home address in the box provided and click "Search."

Google then returns a host of personal voter information about your location including the number of days left for absentee ballot requests, a link to your local government's page where you can request an absentee ballot form, as well as other links to local government sites providing registration forms and other relevant election info. (The types of links will vary some from state to state). There's even a phone number to your state's voter hotline provided.

On the right side of the screen, a Google map displays. There is a green pin in your neighborhood and a red pin where your voting location is found. Then, with one click, you can get directions from your house to the polling site. This is very convenient, but unfortunately, when plugging in my own address, Google was not able to locate my voting location. Hopefully, others will have better success. (Let us know!)

In addition to the web site itself, Google is offering a "where to vote" gadget that can be customized and added to any web site. More importantly, there's an API available which allows third-party developers access to this data.

We Could Have Used This Sooner!

The only major criticism we have is this: why did they have to wait until now until launching? We realize that there are still several days until the actual Election Day, but this information would have been great to have a bit earlier. Given that absentee ballot forms have deadlines prior to Election Day and many states have already started the early voting process, it's a shame this web site wasn't available sooner. However, now that the site is ready, we look forward to using it for many years to come.

Thirteen candidates have been nominated to fill two "Community Director" Board seats. Among the nominees are several familiar names including Chris Messina, Krishna Sankar, and Joseph Smarr. (For more information on each of these candidates and the other 10 nominees, visit the OpenSocial Foundation.)

Only members of the OpenSocial Foundation are permitted to vote. If you're not currently a member of the Foundation, you may apply for membership. In order to participate in the election, however, your application for membership must be received by 11:59 PM PDT, October 29. The polls for the election close at 11:59 PM PDT on November 3.

The OpenSocial Foundation was created earlier this year through a partnership among Google, News Corp., and Yahoo! with the express purpose of "creating the structure necessary to facilitate open technical development, developing governance and review procedures for maintaining an open source project, protecting and enforcing IP, trademark, and copyrights."

The OpenSocial Foundation has a great deal of potential to influence "the Web that is to be." And the two Community Directors, once elected, will likely have a significant impact on the future direction of this still formative organization. It will be interesting to see who the members of the Foundation choose to guide this development.

• Martin Atkins
• John Bradley
• Johannes Ernst
• Snorri Giorgetti
• Eran Hammer-Lahav
• Dick Hardt
• Mike Kirkwood
• Brian Kissel
• Scott Kveton
• Chris Messina
• Peter Nixey
• David Recordon
• Eric Sachs
• Nat Sakimura
• Luke Shepard
• Joseph Smarr
• Allen Tom

Current members of the OpenID Foundation are encouraged to visit the OpenID Foundation, log in with their respective OpenIDs, and cast votes for up to seven candidates. For those who have not yet joined the Foundation, registration is open, starting at $25 for an individual account.

The elections will remain open until December 24, 2008. The new Board will be announced before December 31, 2008. Board members begin their term on January 1, 2009.

"Yes team declares referendum victory saying it marks the birth of a new republic." That was how Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper's website reported... sorry, I mean live-blogged the returns.

The last election saw the Ushahidi group setting up Uchaguzi, a polling-place violence incidence site that leveraged mobile reporting. This time, the election is less notable for that aspect of the real-time mobile Web and more for how the government and the nation's media leveraged it to keep the people connected, comforted and engaged. It's a popular topic of discussions among Kenyans on Twitter.

I first noticed something interesting happening in the country when a Kenyan I follow on Twitter, Samuel Ochanji, brought it to his stream's attention.

Africa has suffered by not having the wherewithal to establish the large-scale infrastructure that allows land-lines for phones. But one of the unexpected results of that, along with the development of cheap mobile telephony, is a proliferation and embrace of that tech by many more people, in more strata of society, than you'd see, for instance, in the U.S.

Recognizing that truth turned the What of real-time mobile into the So What of a peaceful, productive election.

The World is Bigger Than Ever

As much as we complain that the world has shrunk, try walking from Kitale to Eldoret - or hell, if you want to get exotic, from Terrebonne to Prineville - then get back to me. Mountains, lakes, rivers, deserts, jungle, rain forest, oceans, canyons and weather continue to make the world a difficult proposition. Real-time mobile tech in situations like elections and disasters can make a huge difference.

The credit for the success of this election goes to the Kenyan people. But part of that success was the great use they made of this technology. So wrote my friend Victor Ngeny in an email.

"One thing about the elections it was great seeing how the Electoral Commission tapped in mobile tech to get results from the far off stations. The media did also a full monitor of the social networks, i.e. Twitter, Facebook, etc., for updates and reports"

Brand new technologies don't change the world. Figuring out how to use those new technologies, that changes the world. The Kenyans changed the world. Not all of it and not forever. But enough of it, and now.

Kenya orb from Wikimedia Commons | Kenyan cell phone photo by Erik Hersman

Jim Edlin has a long and distinguished history in the IT industry, including being the co-founder and first editor of PC Magazine. While giving my family and I a lift back to our hotel after the Crunchies (the taxis were non-existent that night!), Jim explained to me more about OnlinePrimary.

Jim Edlin describes OnlinePrimary on his website as "a personal project launched out of dissatisfaction with both the U. S. presidential primary election process and the current direction of using technology in elections." In a follow-up email conversation, he explained that "over the last year I have become increasingly distressed by a couple of things about how we do elections here in the US." The first is "the circus that [the] presidential primary system has become", such as states madly scrambling to get their primary earlier in the sequence so it will be more likely to affect the outcome. Also part of the circus is "horse-race-style media coverage that all-too-often becomes self-fulfilling prophecy." The second thing that prompted Edlin to start OnlinePrimary was "the disgraceful showing that technology (my field of endeavor) is making as it moves into the mainstream of the election process." He thinks that technology has failed in elections thus far:

"I don't understand why the straightforward process of casting and tallying votes should require special-purpose machines costing tens of thousands of dollars each, from companies so suspect of fraud and incompetence that they have to change their names (as Diebold Election Systems recently did) to hide from the shame."

Thinking big, Edlin decided to build a website "that would illustrate some alternate visions about both how US presidential primaries might work and about how technology might better support the election process more generally." He also wants the site to become a home for discussions and catalyst to action for new technology-based approaches to elections. As well as the onlineprimary.us domain, Edlin bought onlineconvention.us and onlineelection.us - indicating the broad plans he has.

What is OnlinePrimary?

At its core OnlinePrimary is a single, national, popular-vote primary - conducted using basic Web technology. Or at least it's an experiment in what such a system would look like, were it to become reality in the future. Edlin admits that there are "lots of questions to be worked out about these approaches", including security, auditability, ready accessability to all voters. Also he says it would take a lot of "political and legal gymnastics" to bring about changes like this to the US primaries system. But he says that OnlinePrimary is "a first crack" at building such a system.

In my tests, OnlinePrimary turned out to be a basic website form and still a little buggy (an SQL error popped up after I entered my selections). Here is what it looked like when I 'voted' for my Democratic choices:

There isn't a lot more to it at this time, although there are hints at the features to come. For example there is a "credibility rating", described as "based on a formula that takes into account how many ballots have been submitted from a particular internet address over various periods of time." Again, it's fairly basic. But I'm sure the technology will be enhanced as this project goes on.

The results section shows the promise of how real-time statistics could be used in an Internet primaries system:

Conclusion

Although the current site is relatively bare and there aren't many features, there's reason to think that OnlinePrimary could quickly ramp up. For one, Jim Edlin has been involved with technology mixed with politics before. In 1994 the company he co-founded, The HyperMedia Group (HMG), developed an interactive campaign video kiosk used by a candidate for California governor. And in 1996 HMG developed the California campaign website for Bill Clinton's re-election campaign. Edlin notes that "my personal involvement was small", but he is proud that his company HMG worked on those technology-enabled political projects.

Also Edlin notes that this is just the beginning of the experiment and that more features will be added.

OnlinePrimary is for now a part-time endeavor for Edlin, but it's an interesting experiment in how the Internet could be utilized to power the next generation of primaries and election systems. Tell us what you think below. How else could technology be used to improve the US political system? What other features would you suggest for the site?