SF State BECA professor Marie Drennan is encouraging BECA students to use their talents to fight forms of voter suppression in the upcoming 2008 election.

Drennan has spread the word throughout the BECA department about getting out their cameras for Video the Vote, a national initiative to recruit citizen journalists to watch for, and document problems at voting places and other election-related issues.

“There has been a lot of concern about disenfranchised voters,” Drennan said. “This program helps.”

Video the Vote began in 2006 by a small group of activists and videographers as a response to voter problems in the 2000 and 2004 elections. The project encourages ordinary people to document election problems as they see them, and then upload their footage onto Video the Vote’s Web site. These citizen journalists can use whatever means available to them to capture the footage, whether it be a video camera or simply a camera phone. The footage is then distributed to a variety of news outlets by Video the Vote volunteers.

“We live in an age of new media, when news can be reported almost immediately,” Drennan said. “We should take advantage of that.”

Anyone who witnesses a voting concern anywhere in the country can inform Video the Vote by e-mailing tips@videothevote.org, and the organization will immediately dispatch a volunteer to cover the issue. According to the Video the Vote Web site, more than 1,300 citizen journalists responded to the group’s call to action since the project began in September 2006.

Drennan has posted announcements about Video the Vote and other ways to get involved in the election on the BECA department’s Web site. She has also informed students in her BECA 370 Writing and Electronic Media class about the Video the Vote project, and encouraged them to get involved.

“Students should get involved because every little bit helps,” said BECA student, Daniell Young. “It’s naive to think the election process always runs smoothly.”

SF State political science professor Sheldon Gen thinks this year’s election might be an especially interesting one for Video the Vote participants. “There are some factors in this particular election that don’t make it average, including an extraordinary presidential election and hotly contested state and local ballot initiatives that all work to increase voter turn out,” Gen said.

However, Gen points out that programs like Video the Vote can’t catch every kind of voting problem. “We saw in the primary election some problems with voter access right here in the Bay Area,” Gen said. “Still, you have to ask yourself which kinds of voting problems can be captured on video by the public, and which kinds can’t. It could probably capture voting access problems, but probably not voter fraud problems.”

Despite the possible shortfalls of Video the Vote, Drennan is convinced the program is an important one. “We don’t see much about voter suppression in the mainstream media and it’s important for people to have an outlet to share information about these issues,” Drennan said.

Video the Vote is looking for volunteers as videographers, dispatchers, technical support and bloggers. For more information, visit www.videothevote.org.