On January 11, the Washington Post featured a website created by students to educate about the issues during the 2008 election. This kind of grassroots organizing around the election is what ServiceVote is all about - and we want to use our blog and our website to highlight these efforts and resources. Do you know of another resource like this? Let us know - e-mail us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  

Washington Post: Created by Students, VoteGopher.com Aims to Educate About the Issues

Four years ago, it was all about blogging, e-mail chains and MeetUp groups. Now add YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, each with its own political hub, and Garcia, already an overstuffed info consumer, faces a perplexing online gumbo. Where to go? What to read? Whom to trust?

Founded by a 20-year-old Harvard sophomore named Will Ruben, VoteGopher strives to focus comprehensively and authoritatively on issues facing the candidates, says Ruben. It's a unique effort to fill an information void for young voters trying to connect with electoral politics.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Hillary Clinton, to name just two, have already posted their positions on key issues on their campaign sites. The Des Moines Register and The Washington Post, among other media outlets, track various issues on their online election pages. But VoteGopher features 16 issues. Education, health care and Iraq are of course included. Yet so are rarely addressed topics such as globalization, government reform and business and labor regulations.

The site's motto: "We dig, you decide." Hence the gopher.

Ruben and his staff of 25, most of them Harvard students, read debate transcripts, watch YouTube videos and scour news sites to collect content. Though users can make submissions of their own, such offerings are carefully filtered.

"It's impressive what they've been able to put together," says Lee Rainie, director of the Washington-based Pew Internet & American Life Project. "Back in the pre-Internet era, these students would have just attended town hall meetings, stuffed envelopes, maybe made some phone calls to be involved. These days they're starting their own Web sites."

The idea for VoteGopher popped up shortly before Ruben cast his first vote. It was in 2006, the midterm elections were looming and he couldn't find a site that told him where the candidates stood on issues. Not about who's up or down on the polls, not about the private lives of the candidates, not about speeches or debate performances, but about the issues, he says.

Visit VoteGopher.

Read the full article at the Washington Post.