Foursquare Checkins On Election Day

FourSquare LogoYou know the dandy little sticker you get after voting, “I VOTED!”? Foursquare, the popular mobile-based geo-location game has collaborated with Rock the Vote, Pew Center, Google and the Voting Information Project to create the digital version for the upcoming election. “Every day we see new examples of Foursquare encouraging and reinforcing positive behaviors,” said Foursquare’s Eric Friedman in a statement. “We’re excited to harness the power of Foursquare to drive civic engagement through the ‘I Voted’ badge.” Foursquare currently has over 4 million users. You can download the app to your phone, and/or sign up online.

To pull it off, they’ve collected data on 107,000 polling places. When users check in at these locations and include the hashtag #ivoted, they’ll get the “I Voted” badge in Foursquare, and be added to real time maps and data collected from around the country.

The Foursqaure project builds on the 2008 Twitter #VoteReport, a project that allowed users to share information during the presidential election about their polling places (what was going well, and not so well) in order to make sure everyone was able to vote in a timely and accurate way. Data from the Foursquare project will be used to plan additional initiatives to increase voter turnout and ensure smooth voting experiences for the 2012 presidential election. You can follow the project on election day here.

Allison Fine, one of the co-creators of Twitter #VoteReport, and co-author with Beth Kanter of the excellent book The Networked Nonprofit, will be presenting a webinar with Darim on November 3, from 1-2pm in celebration of our 10th anniversary. All are welcome to this free webinar (though space is limited). Register here!

I’ll be checking in on election day. Will you?