Stay tuned for CIRCLE’s press releases regarding youth turnout–this evening and then early tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, to get a polling location for yourself or someone else, text *pp* (polling place) and then the street address and zip to 69866.

To report conditions at your polling place (thanks to Archon Fung), visit the My Fair Elections Facebook page.

You can also report problems with voting via Twitter. Alison Fine says to use Twitter as follows:

#[zip code] to indicate where you’re voting; ex., “#12345”

#machine for machine problems; ex., “#machine broken, using prov. ballot”

#reg for registration troubles; ex., “#reg I wasn’t on the rolls”

#wait:minutes for long lines; ex., “#wait:120 and I’m coming back later”

#good or #bad to give a quick sense of your overall experience

#EP+your state if you have a serious problem and need help from the Election Protection coalition; ex., #EPOH

Or use a cell phone:

Send a text message to 66937 that begins with “#votereport”

Key in a report by calling (567) 258-VOTE/8683

In elections since 1976,* young people (ages 18-29) have voted slightly more Democratic than the population as a whole. The average difference between the preference of under-30s and the national popular vote has been a mere 1.8 points. In 1984 and 2000,** the Democratic presidential candidate performed just slightly worse among young people than in the whole population.

But a recent Gallup poll of the 2008 campaign found Obama leading McCain by 62% to 34% among youth. In the same survey, Obama did not surpass 50% in any of the older age groups. If these numbers hold up, there will be an unprecedented age gap in voter preferences. No wonder there is such enormous interest in the youth vote story. For us at CIRCLE, it’s always about democratic participation and youth voice. But this year, it’s also about who wins the White House.

*I believe the 1972 exit poll did not disclose age. Before 1972, the voting age was 21.

**In 2000, Gore beat Bush among young voters, 48%-46%, but Nader drew 5% of young people.

The Deliberative Democracy Consortium recently published a report by this name that summarizes what we know about practical deliberative democracy–processes that convene representative citizens to develop policies or strategies to address public issues. The report had an unusual origin. Lars Hasselblad Torres and I organized a wiki (a shared online document) to allow several dozen authors to work on the report together. We enriched the text by interviewing about 20 people and pasting their responses as quotes into the wiki. Finally, we edited and reorganized the whole document for publication. So it’s a deliberative document about deliberation. I don’t think the PDF is online yet, but we are doing a webinar to summarize the findings later today (1 pm Eastern), and you can still sign up for it.

This is a good story from Al Jazeera yesterday.

I’m the dour-looking egghead near the end. (I find this format difficult. You sit waiting in a dark room, facing only an unmanned camera, with a picture of the city behind you. You listen to some technical talk on a headset, and then hear some of the news story. Almost without warning, a question pops into your ear from someone you can’t see. It doesn’t bring out my smiley side.)