Guilt by Association? Nope, Just Clueless

Many of us created the little minute and a half life montage on Facebook a couple of months ago.

You might remember those, and the first thing it showed was "You Joined in...."

I joined in 2007, much to the disdain of my daughter who thought I was dabbling in a young person's world.

Like Twitter later, I remember initially thinking how worthless this platform was but soon realizing its value.

Facebook really is the phone book of our times.

(Odd isn't it, that people paid money to not be listed in the phone book but have so much of their lives public now on Facebook?).

One benefit of Facebook, in this job, is liking various organizations that might have posts of interest impacting election administration.

Usually, posts may be more about elections than administration, but it's good to know, for instance, if advance ballot applications are being distributed or if any voters are expressing any issues voting (as in, not getting their advance or mail ballots).

But by 2009, though, as more and more adults were on Facebook, I realized that I needed a friending policy, a code, a compass, or at least some sort of guideline when I would accept friend requests or like pages. 

Simply, I don't want to friend a candidate and have it even remotely appear that I have a vested interest in that candidate winning or losing.  In fact, a friend of mine once was a candidate at the time of a milestone birthday and I snubbed his party because I didn't want my mere attendance to suggest I had any interest in the outcome of his election.

Such an approach has gotten harder. 

Usually, in what probably looks like some cold follow-up, I'll start accumulating friend requests about this time of year, in even years, and act on them after the November election.

Problem is, if the person wins and later becomes a candidate, well, we're already virtual friends.  I didn't see any way around that and even, further, I modified my inner code to accept a friend request who is a candidate when the candidate is facing an incumbent who I'd previously friended. 

Otherwise, it might now appear I had a vested interest in the incumbent winning again.

More frequently and recently, though, pages I've liked (and often long ago remember liking them) might run advertisements. 

I check Facebook just once or twice a day so I usually don't see any linked to me, but apparently some are.  I've seen others--Friend ABC likes Razor of the Month Club, followed by a sponsored add by the Razor of the Month Club (which I joined just because of the video, I'm embarrassed to say).

A few weeks ago, a Facebook friend I greatly respect sent me a message asking why I supported a candidate.

I had no idea where she was coming from, and after trading some messages at least figured out the offending page.  Basically, it was similar to the Razor ad with a different cut, "Brian D. Newby  likes Site ABC," followed by a post that would lead people to think I supported the content of the post.

I unliked that page, but I've never seen the offending ad.

Politically, though, as ailing Miley Cyrus would tweet, #feelingnobueno.

Last week, my wife asked me about something similar and that evening we went through her news feed and couldn't find the feed, so the perp remains at large.

This is becoming a big issue and an emerging one for election administrators.

Since that 2007 sign-up time, social media has been a great tool in election administration.  It's valuable in tracking sentiment and our dramatic snowstorm in February 2013, it was vital in getting the word out regarding polling place changes.

This very blog has been a social media tool to provide insight into the issues facing election administrators.

I think one way to bypass this is to turn my page into a page people like, not having "friends."  That sounds like a lot of work, but something now on my to-do list.

Second, one purpose of this post is to alert new candidates that I'm not being heartless if we know each other but I've ignored your friend request.  I'll respond in November.

Third, to those who know me, if you seen one of these sponsored ads featuring me, please let me know.  I can't have this. 

And, of course, I've only discussed Facebook here.  LinkedIn is a whole 'other country.  Twitter is moving to more advertising so there could be some curveballs ahead there.

If anything, I think all of this highlights what a "social media policy" really is.

In most organizations, social media policies are just acceptable-use policies, basically telling employees when they are allowed to check their accounts.

A true social media policy touches on the need to be market sensing and communicative through different vehicles, speaks to each channel, and is just one component of an overall outreach strategy.

I've never seen a social media policy that provides guidelines to avoid being part of sponsored ads, although I think the ability to have a page that people like, rather than friend, is the way to go.

Still, social media evolves and the need to track threats (the advertisements are a minor threat to election administrators, but they are a threat) is increasing.

New technology, BLE (low-energy Bluetooth), is enabling a whole new way for devices to connect and messages to be delivered.  In fact, I see that capability as an emerging threat to my Bring Your Own Voting Machine concept. 

That's a separate post soon where I will explain why.  For now, I have some friend requests to consciously review and ignore.

Let's Talk Business

Eighteen months ago, I participated in an Election Assistance Commission roundtable webcast related to social media.

All of the panel participants, and many of the viewers and followers, knew that social media was  emerging as a tool for election administrators.  It was in its infancy in the 2008 presidential election and 2012 was expected to be big, really big.

Twitter, for instance, launched in 2006 and was just finding its way in 2008.  Speaking of Twitter, you may have heard that the close of the 2012 election resulted in the message that was retweeted the most IN HISTORY.

I learned this during the PEW Voting in America Conference earlier this month.  I was thrilled to see Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter take the stage, but I was less enthused about the collective message.  Frankly, I'm not sure there was a message.

PEW's David Becker kicks off a much-anticipated
panel discussion related to social media and
election administration.  Representatives (l-r) were
from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter.
Doug Chapin of the Humphrey School of
Public Administration moderated.

Stick with me--this is tough love, raising the bar, expecting more, that kind of thing.  To the point I raised during the roundtable webcast, it's time to take social media in election administration from a hobby to something more useful, with a grander vision.

And, for that, we need the social media companies to be leaders.

Four years ago, such a moment on stage would have been palpitating, for me at least.  "Oh my gosh, on my gosh, can you believe Facebook sent someone to meet with us!"

But now, I've changed.

It's not them, it's me.  They were enthusiastic and very pleasant.

I'm jaundiced, I guess, but talking about a presidential tweet outpacing Justin Bieber as the most retweeted message over any in the last six years is a yawner.  I also read recently that the finale of "The Real Housewives of New Jersey," was the most talked about Bravo Housewife episode IN HISTORY as well, but history doesn't mean much when the beginning of time is a year that begins with a "20."

We have a common interest with these companies.  They target people, usually adults.  Many of these adults are potential voters.  We represent content providers for them, to get the adult eyeballs they want.  And for us, they represent a distribution channel to reach our voters.

It's time we talk like this.  Social media is a business.  Let's talk business.

Many of us in election administration are resource-poor, stretched thin.  I have familiar relationships with many voting equipment vendors, for instance, but a deep relationship with only one.

That's a singular example but it carries with all of our vendors.  We need to be convinced, among any group of vendors, who represents the high-potential horse to ride.

It's possible that one of the companies on the stage (or Yahoo, Amazon, or Apple, each not in attendance but whom should be paying attention, also) will be majorly declining by 2012.  I probably wouldn't bet against the staying power of Microsoft or Google, but there are plenty of social networks that have experienced dramatic half-lives since 2000.

As demonstration of the fast pace of technology change, go back four years ago--the top tech story related to president-elect Obama and his attachment to his Blackberry.  Could the Secret Service pry it from his hand once he took office?

Now, as he prepares for his second term, could anyone ever convince him to actually use a Blackberry?

When such a new media panel is assembled in 2016, I'd like to see the members sell themselves against the others on the stage.  Tell us specific strategies and programs that are underway, how initiatives can either drive turnout, reduce phone calls on election day, or in some way reach voters cost-effectively.

Tell us how to contact someone specific at Google, or Facebook, or Twitter, for instance, and, better, why we should want to.

The Fangirl days are over, in my view.  Election administration has become extremely more sophisticated over the last 10 years.  Much more is expected of us, and we need these companies to engage with us, with their ideas, their vision.

I think it's fair for election administrators to seek to be recruited, enrolled, and engaged by them.  We have this view with other potential partners and vendors, and I believe we do ourselves a disservice thinking of social media as the shiny object in the room as opposed to expecting disciplined thinking from a maturing industry that brings potential to help our voters.

It's Super Tuesday!

Well, not in Johnson County, actually, but it is Tuesday and a good time for the topical kind of posts that I've said I'll do occasionally on Tuesdays.

With it being Super Tuesday, there's no shortage of media coverage related to elections, including the obligatory jabs at e-voting:  a write-up of an Internet hack from two years ago (I'm sure I'll get into the white paper that's included in a future post) and one forwarded to me today by my favorite former election office employee who lives in Ohio.

Expect a full onslaught, by the way, of new voting machine articles at the end of September.  That's when these articles tend to harvest.

More importantly, there were also a couple of articles today related to social media.

The first was in USA Today, an article that reminded me of callers in 2005 and 2006 who were certain that exit polls were 100 percent reliable and, thus, determined that the Ohio presidential results and the 2004 election were stolen by the same voting machine company we use.

We'll get into polling later this year, when I describe how it's done in Johnson County, and I'm sure you will conclude that such polling is 100 percent UNreliable.

But the big article today was in the Wall Street Journal and didn't mention elections.  It was a story about Twitter use by members of juries.

Our election workers at the polling place share one thing with members of a jury.  We want our workers sequestered, immune to the media coverage of the day.  But here in 2012, we also have to worry that they could contribute to the media coverage of the day.

As sure as today is Super, you can count on a specific question being asked during election worker training:

What do we do about people with cell phones?

Well, who doesn't have a cell phone and, for that matter, who actually talks on the phone anymore?  We don't ban cell phones but we do ban disruptions, so if Billy Bluetooth comes in while on a conference call, we'll ask him to hop off the call and he almost always does.

We have high-school students working as election workers and we don't let them keep their ear pods from their phones in while they work because it looks like they'd just rather be any place other than at the polls.

But we don't fight their texting.  We don't ban texting, but we do ask that they dial it down, limiting the texts to things like, "Mom, can you bring me a jacket?"

But last Saturday, when I discussed our short-code polling place lookup by cell phone, half of our supervising judges immediately pulled out iPhones to try the lookup.  All of our supervising judges have cell phones without exception, and most are smartphones.

This demographic that supposedly isn't computer savvy is savvy, and they are being followed by a group of middle-aged election workers who are used to checking their email on the minute.  We can't fight that, so the "dial it down," message now extends to all election workers.

But our workers come to us without background checks or without any history.  Most volunteer for the right reasons but some have agendas.

They might want to ensure laws are followed at the polls, for instance, and that's an activism we embrace.  They may want to know how secure our election is.  Swell, again.

But we don't need any worker tweeting about the day, or, worse, describing the voters or what they think is happening at the polls.

Photos from within the polling place tweeted out--why that's a loss of control at the polling place that would make an election administrator break out into a cold sweat.  A Facebook status update by an election worker seems almost a certainty.

We've spent the last few years thinking about the technology our voters might bring into the polling place.  This election will be the first where we lay down specific rules about the use of social media on election day by our workers.

I'm a big critic of organizations that develop social media policies because usually they aren't forward-thinking policies on how social media will be used, but rather employee policies that restrict who can access social media.  There isn't enough thought devoted to how the employees can be harnessed as social media evangelists of the organization.

I've mentioned before that our election workers are influentials and we want them spreading the word in any appropriate way possible to help promote voter participation.

In this case, though, a social media acceptable use policy is shaping up as a must for workers while at the polls on election day in 2012.