Handy tools to help Americans vote

Monday, November 1, 2010 | 1:49 PM

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(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

As Americans gear up for the midterm elections on November 2, we wanted to share a few tools that make it easier to gather voting information.

When you search on Google for [polling place] or [where to vote], you’ll see a search box to help you find your polling place, candidates, and local election office. Just type in the home address where you’re registered to vote. The search looks like this:



This feature is powered by the Google Election Center, an experimental service that lets election officials provide data directly to Google in order to create a set of search tools. Anyone with a website can also provide this same functionality by embedding the open source Election Center gadget on your site, or use the gadget code or API to build your own.



And you don’t need to be at your computer to easily find this information. If you’d rather get it on your mobile device, we’ve also created a mobile landing page: m.google.com/elections.



As for election news, you’ll find a special Google News section with stories for each state so you can easily catch up on the latest headlines.


We hope all of these tools help you get and stay informed throughout the election season.

2 comments:

Dr. Michael Quadlander said...

You can almost vote in the Presidential election by phone !

Soon, you won't even need to go to a polling place.

Dr. Michael Quadlander
VeryEasy - http://VeryEasy.com/

Anonymous said...

Ideally, we would all be able to use the internet to cast our vote.

Part of the problem is that a lot of people are just too lazy to go to a voting booth. Even if one is not lazy, it's hardly appealing to go to a crowded place to have to wait in a long line, only to vote for the lesser of two evils.

But why stop at the option of voting for officials online? Why not also be able to vote directly on legislation?

We are trying to build a system that would allow us ordinary people to do just that.

If you like the idea, come to our site and show your support with a vote, and tell others to vote as well.

GovTogether.com