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Al's Morning Meeting

Home > Reporting, Writing & Editing > Al's Morning Meeting
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Al Tompkins
Story ideas that you can localize and enterprise. Posted by 7:30 a.m. Mon-Fri.
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A dozen sites
I'm diggin'


*1. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has outlined how the IRS uses social media in investigations.

2. What's with all the Google anti-trust lawsuits?

*3. The Washington Post reports on why TV reporters have to be  Jacks of All Trades now.

*4. Look at this list of expenses that you might think are tax deductible, but aren't.

5. The number of U.S. millionaires rose 16 percent last year.

6. Find out why there will be a national Eggo waffle shortage until summer.

7. The New York Times explains how women in the work force helped save Social Security.

8. Here are some great databases that newsrooms have created to help connect people with their community.

*9. Watch this online interactive story of the death of journalist Arthur Kasherman.

10. CBS Radio News' Peter King explains how he broadcast from Haiti in the early days after the quake.

11. Find out how healthy your county is.

12. Levelcam lets you stabilize your handheld video.

All of my Diggin' sites are saved on Poynter's del.icio.us page.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but relies on the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. We will correct errors and inaccuracies when we become aware of them.


Get Numbers of Registered Voters in Each State
Here you go: a link to the National Archives list of the latest voter registration stats from every state.

And here is historical data from the Election Assistance Commission on voter turnout of previous elections.

Fairvote.org said:

In all national elections, turnout in the United States has a history of rising and falling over time, although it has never risen to levels of turnout in most of the well-established democracies in other nations. After rising sharply from 1948 to 1960, turnout declined in nearly every election until dropping to barely half of eligible voters in 1988. Since 1988, it has fluctuated, from a low of 52.6 percent of eligible voters (and 49.1 percent of voting age population) in 1996 to a high of 61 percent of eligible voters in 2004, the highest level since 1968.

Turnout in midterm elections is far lower, peaking at 48.7 percent in 1966 and falling as low as 39 percent in 1978, 1986 and 1998.

Even at its highest level in 1960, the percent of eligible Americans who turned out to vote never surpassed 65 percent. This is still substantially lower than in almost all established democracies; turnout is 70-75 percent in Canada and well over 80 percent in most other democracies, including 86.8 percent in the first round of the French presidential election and 91.7 percent in the 2004 proportional representation election for Luxembourg’s legislature.
Posted at 3:40 PM on Nov. 4, 2008
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