from www.umainetoday.umaine.edu
PressThink's Jay Rosen's new NewAssignment.net has a new assignment for everyone come Election Day: Vote, point and shoot. NewAssignment and some partners today launch an "open source photo essay" to collect images from across the country documenting the voting process in a real-time, grassroots wave. It's called the "Polling Place Photo Project" ("Photograph your polling place. Document democracy.") and its meant to "add accuracy, nuance, poetry, meaning" to what the news media otherwise brings us, and also a station-by-station opportunity to capture what's really going on, instead of having to sift through anecdotes after the fact — especially if something goes wrong.
Like democracy, everyone's invited — except no one has to line up for nine hours. Rosen calls it "'political ergonomics'" The art and science of lowering barriers to wider participation." Built by AIGA, the professional association for designers, as part of their Design for Democracy initiative, the Polling Place Photo Project (aka "PPPP") is meant to provide an enhance picture of "what it looks like when Americans go to vote in 2006." Hopefully pics of long lines, rejected voters and malfunctioning Diebold voting machines will be in very short supply. For more information see here, on our very own HuffPo!
