From Twitter Vote Report and Huffington Post's Off the Bus project, to NPR's crowdsourced Inauguration '09 coverage and ProPublica's new distributed reporting network and its coverage of the stimulus spending, a new kind of hybrid "pro-am" collaborative journalism is taking shape, one that is powered by a mix of professional journalists, savvy tech

Conventional wisdom is that Election Day 2008 went off without much of a hitch -- a stark contrast to past electoral debacles. But are we pulling that "truth" out of thin air and unsubstantiated media assumptions? Heather Gerken, Yale Law professor, was part of the Obama campaign's election protection team. Over on Nieman Watchdog, she writes that the press's ingrained habit of reporting on voting problems only when they involve the single hanging chad standing between Al Gore and the Oval Office means a great many important voting problems go unnoticed -- except, in this case, inside Obama HQ.

This election had many firsts, but before we move on entirely to the new administration, the special meaning evoked November 4 by rejuvenating American democracy should not be undervalued. Not only did voters come out in droves waiting hours at the polls, but they celebrated the act of voting in new ways online, and they're still showing pride in the process.

We'll have to view the game tape to see who, in the end, actually turned out to vote this election. But as of noon ET today, more than 2 million people in the coveted Facebook demographic say they've cast a ballot already; In what is, sadly, the final side-by-side comparison of the two presidential candidate's emails, McCain might be able to claim victory over Obama; An article on the Columbia Journalism Review's site makes some controversial assertions about the McCain campaign's online outreach. The premise is that while the Obama campaign has tried to engage the progressive blogosphere on its own terms, Camp McCain "takes a top-down approach;" and a great deal more.

If our referral logs and those of our friends are any indication, where to go to cast a ballot is at the top of many peoples' minds these days. A neat new mobile tool from CREDO Mobile, the New Organizing Institute, and Mobile Commons makes it trivial for voters to find their polling place, wherever they might happen to be; MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe is offering some considered musings on whether Barack Obama's social-networking efforts will actually turn millennials out to vote. It's an open question, and will be for a few more days; A life-long Southern California Republican is backing Barack Obama, and he's rounded up some professional filmmakers to make the case for his candidate; and a good deal more.

We're entirely pleased to announce that Twitter Vote Report is now off the ground and unleashed upon the Internet, with the launch of an actual site at TwitterVoteReport.com.

Now, that "beta" badge is there for a reason. There are, by all means, plenty of kinks to work out in the next few days. But much has been accomplished and in just a few weeks. The site's up, for one thing. The integrated feed of Twitter tweets and SMS messages seems to be flowing, for another. Perhaps most importantly, real live people are actually using the #votereport hashtag to mark their voting experiences on Twitter.

"At this point," writes Colin Delany on techPresident, "the Internet is pretty much done." Our work here is finished! Actually, Colin's talking about the idea that new media campaign staffers' heavy lifting is behind them. But let's play dumb and indeed jump ahead a week to start thinking transition; Will the Huffington Post and its ilk be old news by next Wednesday? That's the question being asked by Advertising Age's Nat Ives. There's evidence indicating that the answer leans "yep;" Forget robocalls, says Salon's Farhad Manjoo. Their efficacy is more rooted in myth than fact. Text messaging is where it's at, argues Farhad, and it's also where Obama and his robust mobile campaign has a huge lead over McCain and his non-existent one.

We noted a while back the curious case of an anti-Sarah Palin email sent by two New York women to 40-odd friends that attracted a reported 150,000 responses. That humble missive has evolved into a multimedia campaign.; In these final days, the presidential campaigns are scrambling to reach out to undecideds or soft supporters and convert them into votes; Now that Obama has won -- the WebMarketing Association's Web Award for the better of the two candidates' websites, of course -- thoughts are turning to how a President Obama would use his much-vaunted Internet savvy to actually govern; and a good deal more.

The Twitter Vote Report project, a evolving partnership with a number of remarkable organizations in collaboration with a amazingly talented network of volunteer developers, hit another milestone this week with a press release from the Election Protection Coalition announcing the effort:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 24, 2008

Use Twitter to Protect the Vote
Election Protection, techPresident, Rock the Vote, and Others Announce New Voter Protection Resource

Read on for the full text of the release.

In the two weeks since we first proposed using Twitter to report election day problems and challenges, both the response to the idea and how it has evolved has been, frankly, remarkable. The established groups who work in election protection have been amazingly receptive to the adoption of an open format for vote reporting, eager to benefit from a combined effort. And a collection of excellent developers and activists are at work building out the protocol and tools for making the most of the resulting data. While work on the project is pretty fluid, we're going to give you an update on where things stand today.