About ElectionLeaflets.org
Electioneering is a high-stakes game. We, at ElectionLeaflets.org, believe that it’s time for that game to become a spectator sport.
ElectionLeaflets.org is a real-time election leaflet project. Our ambition is to create a live visualization of the flood of party political leaflets as they are delivered across the country during an election campaign. If you have recently received any election leaflets through your door you can help by photographing or scanning them and uploading the images to our server.
The idea was conjured up in December 2008 at a weekend in Derbyshire, and finally acted upon in Francis's front living room in Cambridge at the end of April 2009.
The original name of the website was "The Straight Choice", derived from a leaflet in the controversial by-election in Bermondsey in 1983 which has become the type specimen of accusations of dodgy campaigning. We renamed the site "ElectionLeaflets.org" in August 2010.
The team
This website has been put together by three of the usual suspects who don't have time or contacts to sell ideas or apply for grants. The code has been deposited at code.google/theelectionleafletproject.
Julian Todd had the job of pestering people about an election leaflet monitoring website
after discovering just how crucially important these pieces of paper really are.
In 2003 he wrote Public Whip with Francis Irving,
which became the input for mySociety's TheyWorkForYou.com.
In 2007 he made undemocracy.com which applied the same
idea to the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council. Julian and has volunteered his phone number (0791 6090736), should you be interested in talking to someone about this project
Richard Pope initially spent a couple of days writing the code for this site and making it look pretty for the European Elections in 2009. During the run up to the 2010 General Election he has been working full time on the project on a voluntary basis expanding the website and dealing with the press.
He is the brains behind the Planning Alerts project, Groups Near You and StreetWire.
In 2005 he made theElection Memory project to record and publicise
manifestos of the different parties in the Lambeth local elections.
Francis Irving is the other half of Public Whip .
He has done substantial work on mySociety's WhatDoTheyKnow.com
-- among other projects -- and would specifically like you to sign up for Serious Change.
Thanks
Our biggest thanks go out to the hundreds of volunteers who have kindly uploaded leaflets in recent weeks and months. This site couldn't exist without you.
Thanks also to mySociety and Democracy Club for their support and publicity in terms of promoting the site to interested citizens across the country.
In terms of project development, Richard Pope has put a lot of free time and effort into developing the code since April 2009, with a cash contribution of £3000 from Julian and use of his server. As the load has increased in recent days owing to the election, the service has been upgraded by Donovan Hide to Amazon S3 technology with a contribution from ScraperWiki.
We have also had the support of a great bunch volunteers who have helped promote ElectionLeaflets.org by delivering leaflets during by-elections. If you'd like to help out, please get in touch we'd love to hear from you.
Donovan Hide helped get all the images uploaded to and served from Amazon's S3 service.
FAQs
- How do I upload an election leaflet
- You need to upload a photograph of the leaflet in JPG format, then enter a few details about the leaflet. Click here to get started.
- I'm a party activist, can I upload a leaflet?
- Yes. Just upload a photos of your leaflet and enter one of the post codes it is aimed at when prompted. Click here to add a leaflet now.
- Who can reuse the images
- By uploading an image to ElectionLeaflets.org you are allowing free reuse of the image. For this site to make an impact on the way electioneering is conducted it's important that the dodgy ones get as wide an audience as possible, and this helps it happen. If you would like to make sure that proper attribution for a particular image please let us know.
- Is this project affiliated to or supported by any political party
- No.
- Can I reuse the images on my website or blog?
- Yes, but please make a copy of the image on your site and link back to us.
- What do you mean by a leaflet? Does a letter count?
- Any kind of written communication - letters, leaflets, flyers - contain useful information. If in doubt, upload it anyway or get in touch with us.
- Can I send you leaflets by post?
- Yes. Please send them to: ElectionLeaflets.org c/o Scraperwiki, LSP 2, 146 Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L3 5RF and mark each leaflet with the postcode (or postcode district) it was delivered to.
Contact
You can get in touch with us via team [at] electionleaflets.org or phone Julian on 0791 6090736.
Thanks and acknowledgements
Linking leaflets to constituencies is made possible thanks to the TheyWorkForYou.com API