Social Keith

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Social media and politics. They go together like money and politics, but without all the attached strings.

Last week in San Francisco, progressive activists gathered for Netroots California to discuss grassroots politics and online strategies. There were lots of good panels and lots of good people. Also, tacos. It was a trifecta of awesome.

One of the panels was titled New Online Tools for Progressives, and five social media-friendly platforms were highlighted. Which five? Glad you asked…

Circle Voting

“We the People…have many views, and no one group represents us.” So says the informational video at Circle Voting, a website that lets you use Facebook Connect to see how your friends are voting on specific issues. It’s an attractive concept, and a great way to counteract the influence of money on politics. Would you rather be influenced by a campaign commercial or by people you trust? Seems like a no-brainer.

Dem Dash

Much like Circle Voting, Dem Dash enables you to see voting recommendations from your friends and favorite organizations. As we spend more and more of our lives online and less time, say, hanging out on the stoop and talking politics, the ability to see what your friends think about down-ticket candidates is invaluable. Unless of course you learn their views are the exact opposite of yours and you can never respect them again.

Vote Reports

Maybe you already know how you feel about all the issues. Maybe you’re even a one- or two-issue voter. At Vote Reports, you can find political candidates whose voting history matches your stance. A lot of the information on Vote Reports is dependent on which agencies’ reports and ratings are in the system, but this site has the potential to be a great aggregator.

Stumpwise

Stumpwise bills itself as a “free, all-in-one web platform for political campaigns and organizations of all sizes and budgets,” and that sounds about right. All a prospective candidate has to do is fill in a few blanks and her website is good to go. Those without much programming knowledge might be left with a cookie-cutter look, but have you seen most political candidates’ sites? They all look pretty similar anyway – smiling face, American flag, freedom! For small fees, candidates also can use the Stumpwise platform to accept donations and send out text messages.

Friend Out The Vote

Trilogy Interactive developed Friend Out The Vote to help elect Jerry Brown. The application searches public voting records and uses Facebook’s open graph platform to see which of your registered Democrat friends are irregular voters and asks you to post a message on their walls. The two sets of data are synced by email address, so if you listed your email on your voter registration form and you use that same email for Facebook, you can probably expect more get-out-the-vote nudges from your friends in coming elections. And that’s probably not such a bad thing.

About: Social Keith

Born and raised in Texas, Keith Plocek is a writer and digital media strategist who lives in Los Angeles. He's more a fan of the Astrodome than the Astros, in case you were wondering.