] One of the most commonly used tools for voter education
] is the voter information pamphlet. These pamphlets
] provide a great deal of information about ballot
] issues-and sometimes about candidates, as well. Voters
] may peruse the pamphlet at their leisure, and may even
] take it with them into the voting booth. Clearly, voter
] information pamphlets are a worthy voter education
] effort.

A summary of which states have official voter information pamphlets and how much some states spend on them. In most cases under a million a year.

Voter Information Pamphlets

The League of Women Voters put out this brief candidate guide. This is best example of non-partisan candidate information I've found so far, and while I'm glad this exists, I think its pretty sad that more information is not available.

I was thinking this morning that I don't really like the changes that have taken place in order to reform campaign finance. I think we're curtailed the freedom of speech. If I support a candidate then I ought to be able to say it, and I ought to be able to say it with a great big billboard if I so desire. This is America. I also think we've seriously violated people's personal privacy. I can find out what campaigns my employees and business partners have donated money to!! This is extremely dangerous and widespread abuse is only a matter of time.

What have we gained from this? Is the present election less corrupt then previous ones? I hardly think so. I haven't heard any explanation of that. I'm still walking into local elections knowing nothing about many of the races. Knowing none of the candidates.

There is a lot of bad speech in our democracy. A lot of signs on street corners that do not reveal anything about a candidate's competence, their voting record, their goals, even their party affiliation. A lot of our democracy goes directly to those who can generate the best name recognition by having the biggest marketing budget and simplest message.

But in my experience the answer to bad speech has always been more speech.

In California a booklet similar to the one the League of Women Voters put together here is put together by the government. Each candidate gets a least a page to state his or her case. Every office and referenda item is covered. You spend an hour looking it over and you walk into the ballot office knowing something about who you are voting for. Sure, people ignore them, chuck them in the trash, but at least its available. At least everyone gets a chance to tell you who they are, regardless of their budget. In Georgia its very hard to find out what all the races are and whose in them even if you really want the information. An uninformed Democracy is not a democracy at all.

Georgia Voter's Guide

] Many races will be decided either on July 20 or in the
] Aug. 10 primary runoffs. Nearly all contests for judges'
] seats, for instance, will be determined on the 20th,
] despite that their elections are supposedly nonpartisan.

Tomorrow is an election day in Georgia.

Creative Loafing Atlanta | NEWS & VIEWS | PRIMARY CRIB SHEET

] A HANDFUL of Web users are programming their own virtual TV
] newscasts and eclectic collections of video clips using a
] free media-sharing tool called Webjay (www.webjay.org).
] The site makes it easy to build, share and watch
] playlists of audio and video links culled from around the
] Internet.

Interesting....

The New York Times - Multimedia Scrapbooks to Share

] One of the things I learned in the years I have spent in
] law enforcement at both the federal and local level is
] that witnesses of traumatic events relate few details.
] When people are frightened or otherwise psychologically
] shocked, their minds don't record movies, but snapshots,
] and not many of them, either.
]
] Annie's story has a wealth of detail, so much that I find
] myself disbelieving that she could have been as afraid as
] she says she was.

One Hand Clapping: Criticism of Annie Jacobson's story

] ChristianExodus.org is coordinating the move of thousands
] of Christians to South Carolina for the express purpose
] of re-establishing Godly, constitutional government. It
] is evident that the U.S. Constitution has been abandoned
] under our current federal system, and the efforts of
] Christian activism to restore our Godly republic have
] proven futile over the past three decades.

Whew... This is fun reading. I wonder who is funding these people. They are obviously a little nuts, but they are thinking ahead.

For the past 10 years the fundamentalists have been trying to push their legislative agenda, but they've failed not because they can't get a majority vote, but because their proposals are unconstitutional.

So the next step is to go after amendments. The marriage amendment is the first step in that plan, but if they can pull it off they have about 10 more lined up to go. Only after that plan fails is a "Christian Exodus" called for. Of course, if they get people to start moving now they'll have a movement going full swing if their amendment plans don't work out and all they'll have to do is mainstream it. Thats why I'm wondering where the money is coming from here, and why I'm glad I don't live in South Carolina.

I thought it interesting to note that this website is opposed to the 14th Amendment and refers to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression.

Here is a classic quote: "According to the Southern Focus Poll by the University of North Carolina, hundreds of thousands of South Carolinians already think the South would be better off as an independent nation."

Christian Exodus :: Come Out of Her, My People

Here is a collection of all the artwork from HOPE for your printing and distributing needs. It turns out that the creepy Ready.gov posters weren't fake. The site that distributes them is linked from here. Now, if only they had a link for the almost funny if they weren't real "Republicans are coming, make nice" posters that were hung up on the lamp posts down the street.

The Fifth HOPE Artwork

An interesting, arty take on the concept.

GPS pic thing

Its close... It has all the mapping technology. It has a rating system, but its not robust against attack. It has no way of requesting images from a particular timeframe, but that may be a symptom of the fact that there are few images here. Why build what you can use for free? I can focus on the phone side of things and replace this site if it doesn't evolve in the right way as things progress.

GeoSnapper - GPS Photography

] Mei's cellphone can tag each photo she takes with the
] latitude/longitude coordinates. Last night she tried
] sending a geotagged jpeg for the first time, so this
] morning I started researching how to get the coordinates
] out of the jpeg. It turns out that the data is stored in
] EXIF headers.

My last request didn't garner any responses, but here is another one. This poster claim's their cellphone automatically imbeds GPS data into every picture. I'm sceptical. The phone brand is never mentioned. There are a few software applications out there that will take "track" data from a gps receiver combined with timestamped pictures from a digital camera and stamp all the images with the GPS info. Also there are high end digital cameras with built in GPS receivers that will do this kind of tagging. But I've never heard of a cellphone that does this.

In any event, it would be interesting to see what information is being stored in your various camera phone pictures. Take a cam-phone pic, send it to me, and lemme extract the data.

This page also has some links to some interesting geographical photo blogs. None of them offer exactly what I'm looking for, but all of them come close. I'll post about what I've found later.

Request for Cell phone cam images