General Election links

[Jin]

I was doing my prep research for the election and thought I'd post a couple of links that might be useful to some people.Your polling place2008 US Election Info - Google has put up a neat little online app that will help you find your polling place. You can see where exactly the location is on a map instead of copying an address to map it on another website. You can map your driving or public transit route on the same map. Google is awesome.Voting RecordsEver since W. said he intended to address climate change in the 2000 campaign, and then proceeded not only to shun the issue on the world stage but to appoint people who attempted to change the wording of scientific memos (CBS video with images of the actual marked up draft), I've been unable to really believe what candidates say they intend to do. These sources are good for state rep. elections too, of course.Project Vote Smart, a non-profit, nonpartisan organization where you can check Congressional voting records by issue.Congress votes database - run by the Washington Post, it shows percentage of votes missed, how each rep. voted on key issues and how often they vote along party lines.The Money TrailIndustry contributions - Open Secrets is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that collects data on campaign finance contributions. You can take a look at which industries contributed most to which candidate/party, and if you look around the site, there's also information on lobbying and political connections between industries and politicians. You can also look at the net worth of all the members of Congress. It's more of a general campaign finance watchdog tool than specifically useful for this election.Debunking accusationsFact Check is always the place to go to check the truth behind all those accusations and negative ads. They now even have a feature called Ask Fact Check, where they answer reader questions.Fact-checking the debates - the NY Times has video of each presidential and vice-presidential debate side by side with a text transcript as well as an extremely useful "Check Point" feature that points out which claims are true and which are false. I find this extremely useful since otherwise the debates are just a long boring session of he says/she says. The video plays along a timeline divided into the red and blue blocks, red indicating when McCain speaks and blue indicating when Obama speaks, so if you choose, you can easily forward to all the sections where the candidate you're interested in speaks.