Open-Sourcing the U.S. Election

Here's an intriguing feature from the Economist, the formerly print-bound magazine that is moving creatively into the dynamic Web. Its "Global Electoral College" invites people in other countries to signal how they'd vote in the U.S. presidential contest. It presents a world map that assigns "electoral college" votes to each of 195 countries based on population. A "vote now" button lets people "vote" and then displays worldwide results on a map coded blue for Barack Obama and red for John McCain.

So far, the more than 12,000 votes cast overwhelmingly favor Obama. Only El Salvador leaned red when I rolled my mouse around.

But as with many interactive maps, this one makes it annoyingly hard to pinpoint smaller locations; I wound up clicking through to the text table to read a more informative explanation of country-by-country results.

Pick your President on Washingtonpost.com

Users can give their best guess of who is going to win the presidential election in Washingtonpost.com's Pick Your President Contest. The contest allows users to pick which candidate will win each state and automatically tally's the electoral votes. Users look at a map and click once to give a state to Obama and twice to give the state to McCain. The interactive map provides historical information about the previous outcomes in each state as the mouse is scrolled across the state. The user can also see trends amongst other people who have filled out the map, maps submitted by others and the latest campaign research. Once they make their picks, the user names their map, provides a brief explanation of their picks and enters their contact info. The person with the highest correct score in the electoral college voting wins a $500 Best Buy gift card. This allows users to create and share their own content and even potentially win a prize for it. A newspaper or TV station does not have the ability to recieve direct information from users like the internet does.