Advokit is an open-source grassroots-network voter-file campaign-management tool developed by veterans of the Dean primary campaign and available either as a hosted (ASP) service or as a stand-alone install.

What is it with Republicans confusing .coms and .orgs? The GeorgeWBush.org parody site gets a lot of misdirected mail at their catchall address. Amidst the chaff were the occasional strategic or informative message sent to ad-hoc cc lists of Republican operatives, including a few that discuss out-of-compliance local campaign organizations and, most telling, a few with attached spreadsheets identifying lists of voters in a few Florida precincts.

The collection of essays now known as Extreme Democracy should appear in book form early next year, but it is coming out in serialized PDF (portadble document format) at the moment at the project's blog.

Flickr is a photo sharing social medium application for the web that enables people to tag their photos with key words and then view or even subscribe to a feed of all photos that share a given tag.

For a fly-on-the-wall view of voting today around the country, check out the page for photos tagged with 'vote' at Flickr.

Overheard on the #joho irc (chat) channel on irc.freenode.net:

akma: From #joiito -- ptorrone: Overheard in line at polling place this morning.... "I think all the ones with the white headphones are voting for Kerry"

The Heritage Society's Press Room policy weblog cites the new weblog of Mark Tapscott, the director of Heritage's Center for Media and Public Policy at Heritage, called Copy Desk, and and notes that his first entry speculates about whether the blogosphere will transform government in the same way it has challenged the mainstream media (also known as the MSM in blogger, especially right-wing blogger, circles).

His opinion on this matter is fairly straightforward:

My answer is an enthusiastic yes and my purpose with this blog is to do whatever I can to encourage this revolutionary process forward.

The final tally is still being compiled, but Evan Tracy of CMAG released his preliminary analysis of cross-media spending during the 2004 campaign at the 5th Annual eVoter Institute Conference this week. You can read some of the results in the latest CMAG Findings Memo.

According to Tracy, over $1.75 billion was spent this year across all media -- television, radio, print, and online. The campaigns accounted for 48% of the total and the parties picked up 27%. The remaining 25% was spent on local races and ballot initiatives.

Despite tremendous growth over 2000, online spending hardly made a dent:

Television - 91.2%
Radio - 5.1%
Newspaper - 2.9%
Internet - .9%

Perhaps more important than the actual amount spent was an understanding of why so little was allocated to the web. The consensus: old white men. The group agreed that until older traditional political consultants retire, television will remain the most important -- and for many, the only -- medium that matters. Looks like we've got our work cut out for us.

According to Daily Caucus, Senator-elect John Thune of South Dakota paid two bloggers, Jon Lauck and Jason Van Beek, $35,000 over a five month period:

Nowhere on [the] "Daschle v. Thune" [weblog] was there a disclaimer that he was being paid $5,200 per month by a candidate.... These guys spent every day attacking Daschle and promoting the "Rock Star" Thune. They had perfect timing on issues like the last minute Daschle lawsuit. How could they have known? Because Dick Wadhams had hired them! Lauck admitted that he had access to information he wouldn't have otherwise.

The Pentagon has long been one of the most net-savvy of all government departments, especially in its dealings with the media. (Take for example its posting of verbatim transcripts of reporters' interviews with top DOD officials, as a way for the public to judge whether reporters are being fair in their articles.) But this Washington Post article by Thomas Ricks suggests that while the military is trying to convince the public that the battle for Fallujah was a success (using a 59-page Powerpoint presentation called "Telling the Fallujah Story to the World"), a part-time blogger is matching them click-for-click with a far more critical take with a site called "Fallujah in Pictures: The War You Won't See on TV."

Ricks reports:

"As far as the blog site, this is information operations at its finest," said one Marine officer who has served in Iraq. "IO is about influence, and this piece tries to influence people by depicting the human cost of war."

Unfortunately, Harvard restricts access to its students during class hours, so attendees at the "Votes, Bits and Bytes" conference won't have wifi until Saturday's sessions. But, if you ask the conference organizers nicely, they'll give you a pass. So here I am, sitting in the august Ames Courtroom at Harvard Law School, listening to Hossein Derakhshan (Hoder, a leading Iranian blogger) give a fascinating talk about the role of blogs in his home country (he lives in Toronto).

Blogs in Iran, he says, function as a) windows into and outside a closed culture; b) bridges, between men and women, older and younger generations, and voters and politicians; and c) as cafes, where people can talk to each other outside of the government controlled media.

Before him, Pippa Norris of Harvard University gave a talk about the limited impact of e-voting in England (details on her blog). And Tom Sander reported on his research into Meetup attendees.